Cornerstone Dinner honors Good Brick winners
Preservation Houston board president Deborah Keyser remembers the days when the nonprofit had just one homeowner or developer a year to give a Good Brick Award. My, how times have changed.
Now, the organization that works to preserve the city’s historical and architecturally significant buildings gets a slew of requests from people who have saved old structures throughout the city.
Its 2018 awards were given out March 1 as nearly 400 Preservation Houston supporters gathered at River Oaks Country Club for the nonprofit’s annual Cornerstone Dinner.
Bob Eury, president of Central Houston and executive director of the Houston Downtown Management District, was given Preservation Houston’s President’s Award for his work revitalizing and the city’s downtown.
Homeowners who restored homes throughout the city include Genevieve Withers in the Heights West Historic District, Electra and Douglas Elliott in the Westmoreland Historic District, Claire and Jeff Granberry in the Audubon Place Historic District, and Angela Bishop in the Old Sixth Ward Historic District.
Some at the event were honored for seeing more in the buildings they restored. Rather than make an old gas station a new one, Chas and Sharon Haynes took the longabandoned Gulf Oil station at Alabama and LaBranch and turned it into the Retrospect Coffee Bar.
At the other end of that block of Alabama in Midtown is the Axelrad Beer Garden, where there once was an Axelrad Grocery Store. Developers Adam Brackman, Monte Large and Jeff Kaplan converted the rundown building into a neighborhood gathering place.
Andre and Natasha Azizi of Caspian Enterprises turned the Waddell’s Furniture warehouse in the East End into the Sampson Lofts, and Kip Platt and Provident Realty Group turned the Texas Co. Building into The Star apartments.
Roy de la Garza accepted a Good Brick Award for HISD, for saving the oldest part of Milby High School, built in 1926 in a recent construction project.
Becky and Bryan Danna of Re:Vive Development and BD 11th LLC were honored for restoring a circa 1930 Art Deco-style commercial building in the Heights, and Michael Goforth and his wife, Ginger, represented Development Services Group for turning the 1952 Melrose Building in downtown Houston into Le Méridien hotel.
Architect Ben Koush and Houston Mod were honored for Koush’s book, “Constructing Houston’s Future: The Architecture of Arthur Evan Jones & Lloyd Morgan Jones.” Delaney Harris-Finch, Anna Mod and Architecture Center Houston were honored for their exhibit and catalog “Houston: Uncommon Modern documenting modern-era architecture throughout Houston.”