What will happen to the Sears sign in Midtown?
The metal siding, a retail reinvention that dates to the early 1960s, is being removed at last from the former Sears in Midtown. Now, the original Art Deco building underneath — and the Houstonians who spent decades fuming about the choice to cover it up in the first place — can breathe.
Hines, Gensler and the architect James Carpenter — a team of experts hired by the property management company at Rice University, which owns the surrounding 9.4-acre property — are imagining a future for the building as a hub for tech companies.
Mayor Sylvester Turner said he wants the building to anchor an “innovation district” meant to turn the Bayou City into the Silicon Swamp. There’ll be co-working spaces, classrooms, cafes. It’ll be, you know, cool.
But, as the other stuff from the ’60s comes down, what will happen to the sign — maybe the coolest thing about it?
Since the building opened in 1939, there has always been a “Sears” in the sky in that part of the city. A 1940 photograph shows a parapet wall facing Wheeler Avenue that carried that unmistakable Art Deco typeface.
Jim Parsons of Preservation Houston notes that the newer, neon sign was likely added in 1962, when the adjacent section of the Southwest Freeway was completed. “The sign is pretty clearly there — at least in part — to grab the attention of folks on the freeway,” he writes in an email.
After Sears closed this winter, the sign was blacked out, solemn as a funeral. But that doesn’t mean anything necessarily. According to Rice, no decisions have been made about the building, including the sign.
At least one person who’d hate to see it go is the artist Randy Twaddle. He’s been photographing it for years, as he lives and works nearby. “I look at it every single day,” he says. “Especially at dusk, it’s particularly beautiful, because often there’s something dramatic happening behind it in the sky.”
Twaddle imagines the sign being repurposed as an art billboard, maybe.
It would read, “GENTLEMEN AND LADIES NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS / FORGET AND FORGIVE THE PONY AND DOG SHOW / PROSPER AND LIVE LONG IN THE CRANNIES AND NOOKS / CONSIDER AND DEEM YOUR SENSIBILITIES AND SENSE / PROPER AND FIT YOUR SOUL PAYABLE AND DUE.”
Failing that, he says with a laugh, he hopes that maybe Rice can be persuaded to adopt a S-E-A-R-S acronym for the tech hub. Synergistic Entrepreneurial Accelerator at Rice ... Something. Start-Up Environment Something Rice Something. Something like that.