14 Cite Spring 1987 CiteSeeing The Warehouse District An Architectural Tour

Stephen Fox m mfm

Tfie warehouse district, which grew up along Buffalo Bayou between the 1890s and the 1920s, developed in response to preservation-oriented adaptive reuse in (he the overlap of major transportation warehouse district. Off to the left catch a RUNNELS arteries - the bayou itself, navigable by- spectacular glimpse of the Main Street Viaduct. barge, and a series of railroad lines. It 6 901-915 Commerce Street was railroad expansion after the turn-of- (ne corner Travis Street) the-cenlury that made the tightly settled Desel-Boettcher Company Building dDDnq 1912. Cooke & Company working-class neighborhood on the north DDDC bank of Buffalo Bayou and the somewhat Benjamin A. Riesner. a blacksmith turned FRANKLIN denser middle-class residential district carriage-maker, redeveloped the west end of on the south bank attractive locales for Produce Row in the early 1900s. He and his 14 701 North San Jacinto Street commercial redevelopment. The north architect, H.C. Cooke, were responsible not only for this building, leased to a wholesale (nw corner Baker Street) 701-711 William Street side (today'sNoHo), in Fifth Ward, grocery company, but 902 Commerce across the Houston Terminal Warehouse and Cold (sw corner Sterrctt Street) became the ' factory district;'' the south street (1906). Storage Building James Bute Company Warehouse bank, in Second Wird. the ' 'wholesale 1927, Engineering Service Corporation 1910. OlleJ. Lorehn district," reflecting Commerce Street's 7 1000 block of Commerce Street This white, concrete-framed monster is Olle Lorehn's block-long. 4-slory. concrete- long-standing identification as Produce Allen's Landing strategically positioned between the H&TC and framed paint factory for the James Bute 1967. W.H. Linnstacdter MKT tracks and Buffalo Bayou. When crossing Company was the largest warehouse in Houston Row, where wholesale grocery, meat, at the time of its completion. Remarkably, it is Here, where White Oak Bayou empties into the tracks, look eastward for an uplifting view of produce, and baking establishments were the M&M Building. still occupied by Us original owner and used for Buffalo, beneath the H&TC trestle, Augustus C. its original purposes. concentrated until 1950. Wliat is and John K. Allen staked their townsile of surprising about the warehouse district is Houston. Through the early 1900s the foot of 15 807-811 North San Jacinto Street 22 801 William Street Main Street was a wharf area, where barges (jn corner Steam Mill Street) how much still remains of its industrial (1333-1377 Sterrett Street) loaded and unloaded directly onto the earthen City oi Houston Crematory and vernacular buildings, rail trackage, and Bartell Warehouse bank. Transformed into a city park through the Pumping Station brick-paved streets. And there are the 1912 efforts of the Houston Chamber of Commerce, it I90I startling \iews: up to the towers of is- appropriately - navigable by automobile This complex of buildings, executed in red The brown brick Bartell Warehouse, with ns downtown Houston in the middle almost all the way to the water's edge li is also pressed brick with very thin mortar joints, narrow, jack-arch headed windows, represented possible to walk beneath the viaduct to a distance, and down, to always contained the city's pioneer sewage-treatment the old school of warehouse design in the 1910s, westward extension of the park. unexpected glimpses of the muddy bayou plant and municipal incinerator (the crematory). a lingering Victorian presence in the Progressive from which Houston sprang. The molded brick arches of the pump house are Era. 6 1118 Commerce Street especially good examples of what constituted <»u turner San Jacinto Street i standard brick detailing in Houston at the turn 23 1403 Nance Street Enter from the north on North Main Street Gordon, Sewall & Company Building of-lhe-century. Still owned by the City of Houston The Last Concert Cafe I'M v Sanguine! & Staats and A. E. Barnes 1951 1 1 North Main Street Considerably genlrified and shorn of its roof-top 16 804-810 North San Jacinto Street This delightful hybrid of brick, stucco, glass Merchants and Manufacturers Building water tank (outfitted to look like a coffee pot), Southern Pacific Lines Freight Depot block, and iron grills, all festively painted, is the (now University of Houston-Downtown) this stolid brick wholesale grocery company I928, R. W. Barnes, Chief Engineer concoction of Sam Gonzrilcz, who built the Last 1930. Giesecke & Harris warehouse is one of several buildings in the area Designed in-house in the Southern Pacific's Concert in the back yard of the cottage at 904 that has been adaptivcly reused by Harris County. William Street. This vast, ll-story hulk, with its double-volume, Houston office, the main block of the complex is drive-through arcade and 6 l/2-story sallyport regulation 1920s concrctc-and-brick frame-and- 24 801 McKee Street 9 1119 Commerce Street fill. The I- and 2-story warehouse, shooting out entrance bay, was constructed to serve as the (ne corner Sterrett Street) (nw comer San Jacinto Street) on the diagonal of the Houston & Texas Merchandise Mart of Houston. Accessible by Houston Sash & Door Company Building water, rail, car, and truck, it was designed in the Texas Packing Company Building Central's transfer track, is formidable, however. c. 1916 so-called American Perpendicular manner of the 1924. Joseph Finger The Southern Pacific firmly insinuated itself into late '20s by a firm of Austin architects. The Still owned and occupied by S. J. San Angelo's this part of town between 1881 and 1899 by A brown brick reprise of the Bartell Warehouse great flood of 1929, followed five months later meat-packing plant, this 2-story above and successively absorbing the Texas & New at #22. by the Stock Market crash, foretold its economic 2-story below-grade building is in the industrial Orleans, the Houston & Texas Central, and the doom, before construction was even completed. vernacular style of the 1920s: an exposed Houston East & West Texas lines. 25 1902 Rothwell Street Acquired by the University of Houston in 1974, concrete frame in-filled with red brick and metal (se corner Maury Street) the M&M Building has been rehabilitated industrial sash windows. 17 908-912 Wood Street and 711 Walnut Street W. T. Carter Lumber Company Warehouse externally by Charles Taplcy Associates with a Moore Warehouses #2 and #1 1909 jazzy polychrome paint job (1985). 10 1201-1207 Commerce Street 1908 and 1907 Of red brick and heavy limber construction, this (ne corner San Jacinto Street) 902-910 Wood Street building originally comprised the high nave-like (nw corner Walnut Street) 2 Main Street and Buffalo Bayou Central Warehouse and Forwarding central bay and its flanking lower bays, to which Main Street Viaduct Company Building South Texas Implement & Transfer more "offsets" - as they were described in 1909 1913, F.L. Dormant, City Engineer 1927 Company Warehouse - have been added subsequently. c.1908 This is the only way to enter downtown Houston, A handsomely proportioned example of the '20s up over the high-arched span of the Main Street industrial style, respectfully updated externally Consolidated for much of their existences, these 26 900 block Elysian Street Viaduct, then down into the heart of the city, by Harris County. Henry C Schuhmacher and three 3-story warehouses of "mill-type" When the City of Houston built the Resweber crowned with domes and the cornices of Charles A. Perlitz erected this building next to construction (brick load-bearing perimeter walls Viaduct to carry traffic across the bayou, the classically detailed office blocks. The viaduct the no-longer extant Schuhmacher & Company encasing a heavy limber frame) were the first in railroad tracks, and the future 1-10, it simply spans not only Buffalo Bayou but White Oak wholesale grocery warehouse of 19I0. Like the the warehouse district to be convened to loft bridged Elysian Street, leaving the buildings Bayou and the tracks of the Houston & Texas earlier building, it sandwiches three floors lease space for studios and offices, in 1982. The facing it intact and the roadway unobstructed. As Central and Missouri. Kansas & Texas lines as between the bayou and street level. The street concrete-walled film studio and sound stage William T Cannady has observed, this strategy well. The 150-foot-long concrete arch spanning front walls are all brick, but the reinforced affixed to 711 Walnut was added by Houston offers an enticing suggestion of how elevated Buffalo Bayou was the longest single bridge span concrete frame is exposed on the bayou elevation. Studios in 1986. highway structures might have been made to in Texas when the viaduct was completed. intervene civilly in the fabric of hot, humid 11 San Jacinto Street and Buffalo Bayou 18 802 Walnut Street cities to provide arcaded vehicular streets of 3 719-721 Franklin Avenue San Jacinto Street Bridge (ne corner Sterretl Street) noble proportion. Elysian Street is the central tnw corner Milam Street) 1914, F.L. Dormant. City Engineer Patrick Transfer Company Warehouse thoroughfare in the S.F, Noble Addition, platted Magnolia Cafe Building 1911 in Fifth Ward in 1867; the names of flanking I9I1, Cooke & Company Connecting the Second Ward, on the south, to Fifth Ward on the north, this is a condensed Another solid utilitarian warehouse of red brick streets commemorate heroes of the lost cause. The Magnolia Caff was part of an extensive version of the Main Street Viaduct. construction with paneled brick exterior walls. complex of buildings linked to the Houston Ice The Houston Studios sign atop is a kick: "Texas 27 McKee Street and Buffalo Bayou & Brewing Company's Magnolia Brewery on the 12 610 North San Jacinto Street On A Stick." as the Washington DC McKee Street Bridge opposite bank of the bayou. The second great (se corner Baker Street) photographer Renee Butler quipped. 1932, James Gordon McKenzie, City Bridge flood on Buffalo Bayou (in I93S) precipitated the Peden Company Building Engineer collapse of portions of this complex, including 19 1200 Rothwell Street 1930. James Ruskin Bailey During his tenure in the City Engineer's office, the back of 110 Milam Street, which has (ne corner Nance Street) Opened within a few months of the M&M McKenzie put the ingenuity back into survived ever since in its ruined condition. Henry Henke's Fifth Ward Store Building Building's inauguration, this building - engineering. The undulating reinforced concrete 1883 girders thai bracket the brick-paved roadway of 4 404 Washington Avenue originally containing the offices of the Peden the McKee Street Bridge are in the shape of (ne comer Louisiana Street) Company and its retail "hardware department The awkward intersection of streets here does store" - was also in the American Perpendicular moment diagrams, expressively demonstrating Houston Ice & Brewing not reflect the insertion of interstate 10. as it style, replete with a moderately setback might appear to, but the historic collision of two the disposition of structural forces. The spirited Company Building penthouse lower above the comer entrance bay. discontinuous grids with the Liberty Road. A polychmmy and the landscaping of adjacent c. 1912, Cooke & Company small commercial sub center look root here, of hanks are the work of the artist Kirk Farm, who The original Magnolia Brewery of 1893 lay to 13 700 North San Jacinto Street which Henry Henke's branch grocery store (now orchestrated a volunteer bcautification campaign the west, across what is now Louisiana Street. (ne comer Baker Street) the North San Jacinto Cafe) is the only visible in 1985. This building was part of an extensive expansion Peden Iron & Steel Company Building remnant. Above the altered ground floor, the campaign undertaken in the 1910s, all of which I906. C. H. Page & Company rendered masonry facade is intact. 28 507 McKee Street seems to have been the work of the English-born Gable Street Plant, Houston Lighting & Arched windows and the use of projecting brick architect Henry C. Cooke, who set up practice 20 1302 Nance Street Power Company piers and string courses distinguish the Peden in Houston in 1900. 1898. 1913, 1917, 1918, 1921, 1939, 1950 Company's earlier headquarters and warehouse (se comer Richcy Street) Erie City Iron Works Warehouse building, one of the first to contribute to the This is the oldest electrical generating plant in 5 800-806 Commerce Street 1909 modernization of the Fifth Ward factory district. the city, opened on this site by HL&P's Siewerssen and Hogan-Allnoch Peden, manufacturers of heavy hardware, mill, predecessor, the Citizens Electric Light & Power Company Buildings Herbert A. Paine built this extensively arcuated railroad, and oil well supplies, added an brown brick warehouse to contain his wholesale Company. The present plant building, although 1894 and 1906 extensive L-shaped concrete and brick annex to machinery business. The most impressive it incorporates older construction, dates Wi Ison/Crain/ Anderson/ Reynolds's the 1906 building in I9I2, designed by C D Hill elevation - on the south, facing Sterretl - is principally from the 1910s, as the arched rehabilitation of these two buildings as a law & Company. Mustard colored paint now gives composed solely of repeating semicircular industrial sash windows set into recessed wall * office 11975) was one of the first examples of the complex a rather depressing aspect. openings. bays of red brick suggest. m Cite Spring 1987 15

37 1606 Commerce Street (se corner Crawford Street) Eller Wagon Works Building I909 Terra Surveying Company- Befitting a production plant for beast-drawn wagons constructed at the dawn of the auto age, providing a full range of land surveying this 3-story brown brick building is 29 View from McKee and Runnels Streets architecturally anachronistic: the narrow jack- toward Spruce and Bramble Streets arch headed windows bespeak its conservative services to Houston and Austin's Frost Town shotgun cottages design. This collection of shotgun cottages is all that architectural community: 36 103 Austin Street remains or Fmsi Town, an eight-block William L. Macatee & Sons Building subdivision slightly downstream from the Allen 1906, Cooke & Company Development Plats • Topographic Surveys brothers' townsiic (although located in the John Austin Survey, which the Aliens acquired in Vigorously modeled abstract classical detail, J Boundary Surveys • Tree Surveys 1836). Its name derives from a settlement picking out the second-floor arched openings predating the Aliens, made hereabouts in 1822. and the pedimented entrance bay. gives this Unlike the Aliens' grid, the Frost Town grid small building big presence, which it needs now • Completion Surveys aligns with the boundaries of the John Austin that the mammoth Harris County Jail looms over Survey; McKcc Street is virtually die only trace it. The two blocks that the jail occupies were remaining of this old network; note (hat it also where the International & Great Northern retains its exposed brick paving surface. Railway buill its freight depot between 1901 and 4900 Woodway 9020 Capital of Texas 1905, disrupting the tranquillity of what had Tenth Floor Highway 30 1801 Ruiz Street been the old antebellum residential district of Houston, Texas Suite 348 (nc corner McKcc Street) Quality Hill, and precipitating its redevelopment 77056 Austin, Texas 78759 MK&T Railroad Company of Texas Freight as an eastward extension of Produce Row. SURVEYING (713)993-0327 (512) 343-6205 Office Building COMPANY, I N C . 1927. A. L. Sparks 39 109-111 Crawford Street (visible from the intersection of Franklin Avenue Like the Southern Pacific freight depot, the ttaiy and Crawford Street) freight office is skewed in plan, pivoted on the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company Building intersection of (he Frost Town and Houston 1920. Alfred C. Finn grids. Designed by the railroad's St. Louis corporate architect, the freight office exhibits PPG had taken over the Eller Wagon Works Coffee Then vestigial classical detail at the main entrance, Building (#37) when it buill this 3-story office which is considerably less compelling than the building ju-,1 after World War I - now expanse of sheds along McKee. camouflaged in eyc-cze green. The crisp, And Now rectilinear composition of the Crawford Streel Coffee lions came West with the people 31 1901 Ruiz Street front and the pair of cartouche plaques above (he who settled Texas. Settlers roasted, i nc corner Hamilton Street) (wo outer window bays betray the hand of H. J L. Jones Warehouse Jordan MacKcnzie, an obscure but exuberant ground and brewed their coffee over 1930, J. W. Northrop. Jr. designer who worked for the Houston architect campfires, and at open hearths. Hardy Alfred C. Finn. Northrop is best remembered for his numerous pioneers gave way to urban cowfolk, American Georgian houses in the South End and and fresh roasted coffee to grounds in a 40 1619 Franklin Avenue River Oaks. But Tor one of his most loyal clients. can. (nw comer Jackson Street) J. L. Jones, he designed a number of warehouse Shell Petroleum Company Service Then in 1973, the House of Coffee and commercial buildings in the 1920s. There is Station #12 just a hint of the Georgian - streamlined, to be Beans, Houston's original coffee store, 1934 sure - in this 3-story brick warehouse, with its was founded. Today you can come by abstract rendition of a pedimented portal at the An ebullient little art deco pavilion. Houston's coffee pioneer for a main entrance. fresh-roasted, fresh-brewed sample, and 41 2016 Franklin Avenue discover something timeless. 32 1901 Commerce Street (sw corner St. Emanuel Street) (ne corner Hamilton Street) Standard Brass & Manufacturing M. De George Warehouse Company Building 1925, L. S. Green 1937, John F. Staub HOUSE OFFEE BEANS This was the last major work of Lewis Sterling This building is by one architect you wouldn't Houston's •^ ooriginan l coffee store, since 1973. Green, a Houston architect quite active between have expected to find represented in the 1900 and 19M, after which his career begun to warehouse district, but here it is: a handsome 2520 Rice Boulevard • in the Village • 524-0057 • 10-6 M o n d a y - Satuiday wane. It was built for Michael De George, who composition of horizontally bunded industrial also built the De George and Auditorium (now sash windows emphasizing the planar walls ol Lancaster) hotels. the building box. into which deep and shallow volumetric incursions arc made to provide for 33 1700 block Commerce Street vehicular and pedestrian access. Stauh's partner, <