Nov/Dec 1990 GHPA Newsletter

FOR PRESERVATION NEWSLE II ER OF THE GREATER HOUSTON PRESERVATION ALLIANCE

THE BRADY HOUSE

by Stephen Fox

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n late August Houston lost one of its oldest buildings to fire. This was the Brady House, Brady Place, located near the intersection of Milby and Harrisburg in the East End. Aside from the Nichols-Rice-Cherry House in Sam Houston Park, the Brady House was Houston's only remaining example of Greek Revival style domestic architecture.

The Brady House was built about 1870 by John T. Brady (1831-1891), a Maryland-born and educated lawyer, brick manufacturer, and real estate developer, who came to Houston from Kansas in 1856. Bradywas an organizer of the Houston Ship Channel Company in 1868, founding president of the Harris County Industrial Association in 1869, and a founding trustee of the Bayland Orphans Home. Much of his development activity was concentrated along Buffalo Bayou between Houston and Harrisburg where, at one time, he owned much of the property from Milby Street east to Brays Bayou. Brady's involvement in real estate, navigation, and railroad development in this area was a second generation effort.

His father-in-law, General Sidney Sherman, had engaged in development there beginning in 1846. Brady was president of the Houston Belt & Magnolia Park Railway, chartered in 1889, a narrow gauge line that ran from Houston to Magnolia Park, a pleasure ground along what is now the Long Reach of the Houston Ship Channel famed for its giant magnolia trees.

Brady was vice-president and general manager of the Port Houston Investment Company, which was formed to develop what eventually became the Magnolia Park community. Brady Island, where Shanghai Red's Restaurant is located, is named for Brady.

The house that Brady and his wife, Lennie Sherman Brady, occupied was located at the northeast corner of Milby and the Harrisburg

Road. It was a type of house characteristic of upper-middle income residential construction in Houston from the 18505 to the 1870s: a two-story wooden house, three bays wide and faced with a double-height portico supported by four fluted Doric columns. The house was roofed by a shallowly-pitched hipped roof.

Surrounding the front door and the front facing windows were Greek Revival style splayed and shouldered architraves. The front door was flanked by sidelights and topped by a glazed transom. The first-floor windows had raised fielded panels inset beneath their sills.

Photographs of the house from the tum-of-the-century indicate that there was a balcony at the second-floor level, as well as window bays and porches along one side, which

were probably added during the course of the Brady family's occupancy. Following the death of Lennie Sherman Brady in 1885, John T. Brady married Estelle J eDkins. By his first wife Brady was the father of a son, Sidney Sherman Brady, and a daughter, Lucy Sherman Brady (Mrs. Wilmer S. Hunt); by his second wife he was the father of Etta Brady (Mrs. J. Wanroy Garrow).

The Brady House became the focus of a family enclave along Milby. At 315 Milby and Garrow the first Mrs. Brady's sister and brother-in-law, Belle Sherman and William E. Kendall, built a large house in the early 1880s, which Mrs. Kendall and her family occupied until about 1917. It was demolished in the late 1940s.

Sherman Brady constructed a brick house for

The J. T. Brady House, photo taken ca 1900. (From Art Work of Houston. Texas. 1904. Photograph courtesy Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library.)

his family in what had been an orchard between the Brady and Kendall houses, at 403 Milby and Wilmer, about 1907. Sherman Brady continued the family's involvement with real estate, brick making, and navigation. In 1909 the family enclave became part of Brady Place Addition, whose streets bear the names of Brady family relations. Sherman Brady was killed in an accident in 1910 and in 1912 Mrs. John T. Brady moved from Brady Place to the South End. The Brady House continued to be occupied as a single-family residence even after the Sherman Brady estate sold it in 1922 to E. L. Crain, who moved it across Wilmer Street into what had been the front yard of Sherman Brady's house. In the late 1940s the house acquired a one-story wood annex at Milby and Wilmer that contained a tavern and grocery. In the early 1950s Steve Palmeri divided the interior of the Brady House into ten apartments. By 1980 the side bay and porches were gone and the second-story front balcony had been enclosed.

Remains of the J. -T. Brady House, photo taken after fire, September, 1990.

At the time of its destruction the Brady House was owned by American Teachers Associates, Inc. of Humble_ It was included in the Houston Architectural Survey of 1980 but had

never been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places or as a Registered Texas The S herman Brady Historic Landmark.

House at 3805 Wilmer is the only remaining building within the old Brady Place enclave.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS Nov_3 Nov. 4.

Nov. 8-10 Nov. 10 Nov. 1Han. 7:l Nov. 12 Nov. 15-17 Nov. 17 Nov. 18 Nov. 18 Nov. 19 Nov. 21 Nov. 29 Dec. 1-2 Dec. 2 Dec. 11 Dec. 16 Dec. 16 Dec. 16 Dec. 19 ongoing thru December

Heritage Education Committee's Teacher Workshop in Main Street/Market Square District, Magnolia Ballroom GHPA Walking Tour, Rice University Campus, reservations required, call 236-SOOO. A National Symposium on "TIle Spanish Missionary Heritage of the United States", San Antonio. Call 512/229-5701.

9th Annual Houston Waterfront Festival, Port of Houston's Long Reach Docks. Call 921-2939.

"Rediscovering Pompeii", Museum of Fine Arts.

GHPA Executive Committee.

McFaddin-Ward House 4th Annual Museum Conference, "TIle Arts and the American Home, 1890-1930," Beaumont Call 409/832-1906.

"Neighborhoods for the '90s" conference, George R. Brown Convention Center. Call Houston Proud 622-4961.

GHPA Walking Tour, Main Street/Market Sq. Historic District, 2:00 pm.

GHPA lecture and tour, Bayou Bend Gardens, reservations required, call 236-5000.

GHPA Board Meeting.

GHPA Walking Tour, Main Street/Market Sq. Historic District, 12:00 noon.

Bayou Bend Lecture, "TIle Governor's' Palace at Williamsburg: A New Look." Call 529-8773 Galveston Historical Foundation's Dickens on the Strand. Call 4091765-7834 or 713/280-3907.

Round Top Christmas on the Square.

GHPA Members' Holiday Party.

Wmedale Christmas Open House.

GHPA Walking Tour, Main Street/Market Sq. Historic District, 2:00 pm.

Home tour, Smithville Heritage Society, 512/237-4545.

GHPA Walking Tour, Main Street/Market Sq. Historic District, 12:00 noon.

"Digging Up Houston", an exhibit on urban archeology, Children's Museum

HOUSTON'S mSTORIC DISTRICTS Part V. Broadacres

by Eric Lindquist Entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, the residential enclave of Broadacres contains a prime collection of 1920s American eclectic architecture. ' It is also one of the most important examples of a privately planned residential community from the beginning of this century.

Located in Houston's South End (one block north of Bissonnet and east of Mandell), Broadacres is a residential subdivision comprising 34.17 acres, divided into 25 lots. The houses face the esplanades of North Boulevard and South Boulevard, between a private park on the east, and West Boulevard on the west. Eighteen houses were built between 1923 and 1930, the remainder from 1938 to 1954.

The South End, in the early 1900s, was a rapidly developing area that included the Rice Institute, Hermann Park, and the proposed site of the Art League museum. In 1916, J.S. Cullinan developed Shadyside, a private place type neighborhood, with strictly enforced deed restrictions. Following World War I, other "planned" communities were developed in the South End. In 1923, James A. Baker Jr., of the Houston law firm Baker, Botts, Parker and Garwood, initiated the Broadacres subdivision on property his father had owned since 1908.

Initially, eighteen lots were sold to acquaintances of the Baker family, all prominent Houstonians.

Houston architect William Ward Watkin and engineer H.A. Kipp prepared the original plat and Vlere responsible for the planning of the park and the esplanades. The Broadacres plat shows the horsf:shoe arrangement of streets within the subdivision, with the private park at the east, or open end, the esplanades of North and South Boulevards with the West Boulevard esplanade at the base of the horseshoe. North and South Boulevards were extended to Mandell on the west, eventually allowing public access from all four comers as the area was developed.

The architecture exhibited in Broadacres is significant for several reasons. The four dominant modes of 1920s American eclectic residen tial archi tecture- - Medieval, Mediterranean, Georgian and Colonial--are all evident.

Working within these stylistic categories are the designs of Houston's most prominent architects of the period: John F. Staub and Birdsall P. Briscoe. Staub designed a total of six houses in Broadacres, including his first independent residential commission, the Hutcheson house (1924-25). His Georgianinspired house for Mr. and Mrs. Joseph A. Tennant (1926-27) is regarded as one of his finest designs.

the concentration, in one enclave, of unusually fine examples of 1920s American eclectic architecture; and the presence of designs by Houston's two most prominent architects of the period, Staub and Briscoe, make this neighborhood a visual laboratory of period planning and architecture.

Briscoe designed eight houses in Broadacres: four with his partner, Sam H. Dixon, Jr. and four after the dissolution of their partnership in March 1926. Briscoe, too, claimed one of his finest designs in the Broadacres subdivision: the Italian villa for Burdine Clayton Anderson (1927-28). In addition to the planning of Broadacres, William Ward Watkin also contributed one design, the Spanish-Mediterranean house for Brian Brewster Gilmer (1925-26).

The loss of Houston's historic architecture continues at an alarming rate. Virtually every week brings news of the demolition or threatened demolition of still another of our dwindling stock of historic buildings, sometimes of whole blocks of historic buildings. While other cities are stabilizing neighborhoods and enjoying other economic benefits of preservation, we get another vacant lot or still another addition to what already seems like an ocean dedicated to surface parking.

Construction in Broadacres ceased during the Depression, although individual landscaping efforts contributed to the overall character that is evident today. Noted New York landscape architect, Ellen Shipman, was commissioned in 1936 to work on the Clarence L. Carter house (Briscoe and Dixon, 1926-27) for its second owner, Laura Rice Neff.

Because the development of River Oaks in the mid 1930s began to offer prominent Houstonians an alternate building locale, it was not until the mid-1950s that all lots in Broadacres were developed.

Remodelings and such contemporary accoutrement as security fences and gates have as yet failed to distort the cohesive visual impact of Broadacres. The mature live oaks that line the esplanades give Broadacres a park-like atmosphere, a tribute to Watkin's planning foresight. The three related areas of historical significance of Broadacres--its planning as a small-scale private residential community, conceived and executed by Watkin;

HISTORIC PRESERVATION AND ZONING IN HOUSTON

by Margie Elliott

Since September, Houston has lost to demolition four historic buildings near the intersection of Washington Avenue and Heights Boulevard: (1) the Old Harris County School #1 at 3601 Barnes St., (2) the Washington Square Warehouse Building at 3400 block of Washington Ave., (3) the onestory commercial building at 3613-17 Washington Ave., and (4) the two-story commercial building at the corner of Washington and Heights. The Texas Historical Commission had noted that all these commercial structures were worthy of preservation and were eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Buildings listed in or eligible for listing in the National Register qualify for federal rehab tax credits.

A mid-November demolition of the Macatee & Sons Warehouse Building at 101 Austin Street will convert this address to a surface parking lot. This two story stuccoed brick building trimmed with stone is very elaborate for a

warehouse, reflecting some Beaux Arts influence in the romanesque arches and their detailing. The building is all that remains of an influential and diverse family enterprise.

William L. Macatee started his firm in 1860 and became one of the state's largest building material suppliers. A promoter of a deepwater port for Houston, he received the first shipment of goods when that port became a reality. The Macatee Building was listed in the National Register in 1984.

Houston's 1954 Frank Lloyd Wright house, one of only four Wright-designed buildings in Texas, is currently for sale, marketed as a teardown. The Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy is seeking the assistance of Houstonians to preserve this house, located in Bunker Hill Village.

Since January, the Sixth Ward/Sabine Historic District has lost four buildings to demolition and two to fire. This was Houston's first National Register district. Surface parking lots to serve the City'S Municipal Courts complex have replaced many of the houses originally located in the district.

The fundamental problem facing preservation in Houston is¡ the absence of a local preservation ordinance at the center of a coordinated program that includes identification, designation, and regulation of historic properties. The current community discussion about planning, zoning, and/ or other new land use ordinances is critical to the future of historic preservation in Houston.

Recognition and protection of historic buildings is established public policy in every major city in the United States, with the exception of Houston. A 1987 study by the National League of Cities identified historic preservation as one of the most widely used tools of economic development by cities across the country. Robert Campbell, architecture critic of the Boston Globe, recently labeled the preservation movement "a national consensus."

The existence of approximately 2,000 local landmarks ordinances throughout the country is only one manifestation of this national consensus.

Preservation is sometimes initiated in the public sector, sometimes in the private sector, and is often a public-private partnership. But it never occurs anyplace at a significant scale without public planning or in the absence of local land use controls. Incentives without controls are not enough. Good preservation programs contain multiple elements, both carrots and sticks, carefully coordinated to v.urk together toward the desired objective of protecting the physical character of the community. Surveys and a local preservation ordinance that provides for the designation and regulation of historic properties are always central features.

All three levels of government--federal, state, and local--play important roles in historic preservation, but the protection of historic landmarks and districts is very much a local responsibility. Federal and state roles cannot be ignored when fashioning a local preservation program; they are particularly important in that they provide the framev.urk for the local program and because they offer some financial assistance. The National Register of Historic Places is often a key element in local preservation programs, but it provides almost no protection to listed properties. The heart of any preservation program must be in controls enacted locally.

In order to withstand tests in court, a preservation ordinance cannot simply be any device a city may wish to adopt. To pass muster in state courts, local ordinances must be set up by municipalities in accordance with state enabling legislation. What v.urks in Atlanta may not v.urk at all in Houston because the states of Georgia and Texas make different provisions for allowing their cities to protect historic resources. It is therefore very important in drafting a local ordinance to understand the enabling legislation of the home state.

In Texas, the enabling legislation is given in Chapter 211 of the Texas Local Government Code, Municipal Zoning Authority. More than 40 towns and cities in Texas have adopted ordinances that address historic preservation in Most of the ordinances that some way.

designate and protect historic properties are extensions of local zoning ordinances, providing for "historic overlay zoning."

There are some exceptions. Although it had no previously adopted zoning ordinance, the City of Bryan in 1981 passed Ordinance No. 415, which provided for the designation of historic districts and landmarks; created a landmark commission; and outlined procedures to be followed relative to proposed alteration, change, demolition, or removal of landmarks.

In 1983, Bryan adopted Ordinance No. 501, establishing the East Side Historical District, which included 96 properties, 87 of which were identified as significant. In 1985-86, Bryan went to court over a challenge to one of its designated landmarks, and the preservation ordinance was upheld in local court. The property owner appealed, but before the case could be re-heard, the city granted the owner a variance and the case was dropped. In 1987, Bryan applied to the Texas Historical Commission for approval of its preservation program as a Certified Local Government.

The application was denied upon the advice of the Attorney General's office that the Bryan ordinance was in effect an imposition of zoning powers although no zoning ordinance had been adopted by the City of Bryan. In 1989, Bryan adopted a municipal zoning ordinance.

At least two other Texas towns, Goliad and Salado, have also adopted preservation ordinances although they do not have local zoning ordinances. Because these ordinances are not tied to zoning ordinances, the Texas Historical Commission has been advised by the Attorney General's office that these local ordinances do not meet the requirements of the Certified Local Government program.

In 1986, consultants from the Conservation Foundation in Washington, D.C. conducted a study and prepared a report for the Texas Historical Commission that dealt with Texas preservation laws and programs. One of the findings of this study was that •... significant difficulties arise in cities such as Houston that have not enacted zoning controls. Without

zoning in place, these jurisdictions cannot enact separate ordinances to protect historic landmarks or districts. As a result, few local protections exist for historic resources."

of Houston, or a special interest group from Houston, asking the Texas Legislature once again to solve a problem that, in the view of legislators from every place else in the state, should be solved in Houston.

In response to a Houston inquiry about how to draft a local historic preservation ordinance, the Texas Historical Commission responded in 1986 that "under the present state enabling legislation for historic preservation activities on a local level, zoning is the method which must be used in order to designate and protect local historic sites and districts."

Some have suggested that even without zoning it is possible for Houston to enact ordinances to protect historic properties and therefore it won't matter significantly with respect to preservation whether zoning or some other form of land use control is adopted as the result of current community discussion.

Technically, this thesis may be valid. Houston could, as Bryan and a few other small Texas towns have done, pass a preservation ordinance without regard to state enabling legislation, but, this seems unlikely.

In view of the uncertainty over whether zoning or other land-use control ordinances mayor may not soon be considered and! or adopted, preservationists and others who share common concerns about our city and its many needs should now be asking where that will leave the issue of historic preservation. What other kinds of land use controls are being considered and will they address historic preservation?

Could new state enabling legislation be passed to provide the basis for a local preservation ordinance in the absence of zoning? Would the City of Houston support such a change in the Texas Legislature, or would that task be left to individual citizens and historic neighborhoods?

Will preservation even be addressed in the discussions about land use controls?

The simplest approach to enacting a local preservation ordinance would be through zoning, were Houston first to adopt zoning.

Other approaches will probably be more complicated, especially if they involve the City

From its origins as a silent-movie theater, the Ritz went through numerous changes: from the advent of sound in 1929, to Spanish movies in the 1950s, to black and karate films in 1970s, and finally skin flicks until its closing in 1984.

These changes in audience translated into multiple renovations by operators with little regard for architectural heritage; most were the reconfiguration of its original entrance, the loss of its organ and the crude cover-up of its proscenium arch.

In 1985 developer Gary Warwick acquired control of the theater and the adjacent Larendon Building, which will be used for administrative offices. The buildings are being rehabilitated with the help of designer Kirk Eyring and consulting architect Barry Moore.

Extensive work has been done by Don Curtis to restore and recreate the plaster work. Both buildings are listed in the National Register as contributing to the significance of the Main Street-Market Square Historic District.

THE RITZ THEATRE: A NEW NAME AND A NEW LIFE

by Rafael Longoria There was a time when going to the movies was one of the great pleasures Houston had to offer. The Majestic, the Metropolitan and Loew's State, the great downtown movie palaces of the 1920s, were much more than places to see a film. At their height, these theaters were exuberant architectural fantasies that provided their audiences with as much entertainment as the double features.

Unfortunately all three buildings were demolished in the 1970s, victims of suburban flight and lack of vision.

The Ritz Theatre, located at 911 Preston Avenue, is . the lone survivor from the glory days. Completed in 1926 by William Ward Watkin, first director of Rice University's Department of Architecture, its austere classical facade was in sharp contrast to the exuberance of its contemporaries. Watkin's academic discipline can still be appreciated in the delicate interior and exterior decorations.

The theater will be renamed the Majestic Metro in order to take advantage of the existing sign now hanging on its front~ It will function initially as a conference center and party-reception room, but there are eventual plans to use it as a dance club and as a setting for live acts and film festivals, since it still has a working 35mm projector. Rehabilitation work is still continuing on this latest remodeling to meet a scheduled December 1990 opening in order to be available for the Holiday party season.

For information regarding the Majestic Metro, call Gary Warwick at 623-0038.

Because of its location around the comer from Market Square, the importance of this project goes beyond the saving of a significant piece of architecture. The increased pedestrian activity produced by the Majestic Metro will be invaluable for neighboring restaurants, which at present are only viable during lunch-time.

Imaginative reuse of the remaining historic structures is necessary in order to repopulate the area. The reopening of the Ritz is an important step in the renaissance of Market Square.

NEWS CLIPS Many thanks to Hines Interests Limited Partnership for sponsoring William H. Whyte's luncheon talk on October 24. It was a rare opportunity to hear from one of the most distinguished observers of American urban life.

~ Houston City Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of Interior in September. This formal recognition by the U.S. Department of the Interior acknowledges the statewide historic significance of the property, which includes Hermann Square Park, in the areas of politics-government, architecture, landscape architecture, and art.

Thanks to GHPA members Stephen Fox and Barrie Scardino, for their pro bono preparation of the application.

~ The Bellaire Historic Home Survey has identified nearly 200 homes still standing from among the 330 homes existing in Bellaire in 1940. Information is still being collected. Write the Bellaire Historical Society, P. O. Box 854, Bellaire, TX 77402. The society also maintains an informal archive consisting of letters, books, photographs, and documents pertaining to the history of greater Bellaire. Donations are always welcome. Documents and photographs

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Greatei" ' HouSt6ii PreserVaiior, 'Aliiance, J. Steveri8(06kS; Chairman} PubliCations Committee. '., The opiiiions ~iM:Js~ /~o> l'lot necessarily IreoreSent :thifiYlewsOf the ' board of

can be duplicated if owners of important materials are willing to share them but do not wish to relinquish ownership. .

~ The Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) has elected Houstonian Larry D. Jones, CSI, South Central Region Director, effective July 1, 1990. In this tbree-year position, Jones will serve as the link between the Institute and its chapters in Oklahoma and Texas. CSI is a non-profit technical organization dedicated to the advancement of construction technology and serving the interests of architects, engineers, contractors, manufacturers' representatives, and others in the construction industry.

~ Welcome to two new GHPA board members, Angela Kerr Smith and David B. Jones.

Angela is Executive Director of the 路Houston Heights Main Street Project and is a resident of the Heights.

David is Senior Vice President of R. F. Dini & Associates and lives in Spring.

The Greater Houston Preservation Alliance 712 Main Street, Suite 110 Houston, Texas n002-3207

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