Thriving cottage industry
Businessman gives tiny homes second life as collection of shops
Houston design fans have a new place to shop in the city’s newest creative community, The Cottages at Matt Camron.
Located on Westheimer between Bammel and Sackett, the grouping of late-19th-century and early-20th-century cottages fill out a city block that also includes Giacomo’s restaurant, the Alchemia and Pomp and Circumstance boutiques and the longtime Matt Camron Rugs & Tapestries showroom. Businesses setting up shop in the restored structures — homes adapted into businesses — include interior designers, home-goods specialty stores and a pilates/yoga studio.
Jennifer Barron Interiors and Restored Motion Pilates and Yoga were the first tenants, and in the two years that followed, they were joined by Tokerud & Co. and Jackson Warren Interiors. Home goods shops that also feature interior design firms include Roseanette Navarro Interiors, Suzanne Duin’s Maison Maison, Renea Abbott’s Shabby Slips (a second location for her) and Paloma & Co. (which also houses Paloma Contreras Design). There’s also a social-media/ marketing firm operating here, Swiggard Creative.
If you’re shopping there, Maison Maison has the cutest restroom in the area, and while you’re there, you can check out her luscious decorative pillows, custom lamp shades and a variety of scarves, handbags, jewelry and other goods. Shabby Slips is filled with vintage and antique home furnishings, many of which have been reupholstered in luxurious fabrics, and Roseanette Navarro’s shop has a mix of antiques and new items, from inexpensive accessories to one-of-a-kind furniture and lighting. Contreras and Paloma & Co. shop co-founder Devon Liedtke opened their shop earlier this year with a range of things, from cocktail napkins and candles that make great hostess gifts to original art and antiques for your home.
They’re the kind of small cottages that builders often tear down to make way for townhomes or to accumulate land for bigger houses, but back in the 1980s, businessman Charlie Thomas
collected them and a handful of others — 15 in all — from various sites around the city and gathered them one block away from their current location.
For years, various businesses operated from that location, known as the Gardens of Bammel Lane. When that block was sold to Giorgio Borlenghi, who planned to build a 26-story luxury residential tower, Matt Esfahani, founder of Matt Camron Rugs & Tapestries, knew the charming little cottages would likely be lost.
Esfahani bought seven of them from Borlenghi — who since has shelved his plan for the high-rise — and worked with architect Patton Brooks to create a new life for them.
It was Brooks’ task to assess the space left on Esfahani’s block — after all, his rug store, the restaurant and two boutiques were already there — and determine how many of the cottages could fit there and which buildings would best survive a move. One is the first home built in West University Place in 1927 and another, built in the early 1930s, was a floral business in EaDo. The site where Paloma & Co. operates previously was a hair salon.
“Matt and I worked together to come up with the seven best, and I came up with a master plan to fit as many of the old houses on his block as possible,” said Brooks, who worked in Houston for 50 years before heading to Santa Barbara, Calif., where he lives now. “Having lived in Houston all those years, I appreciated the fact that they were the old-style good-quality houses.”
Brooks created a master plan, including landscaping, that considered parking needs, sidewalks and paths so that the people who work or visit there can move around freely. Brooks, Esfahani and Esfahani’s daughter, 35-year-old Sarah Tringhese, who manages the property, wanted it to be a destination, where people could visit designers or shop and then stop at Giacomo’s for something to eat or drink.
There’s a grassy area and small gazebo, the perfect spot for design events when the weather cooperates. Already they’ve had a book signing at Maison Maison, and Tringhese said there surely will be more events coming.
“We really wanted a sense of community,” Tringhese said. “You spend so much of your day at work, you want it to be an enjoyable experience, too. There are paths everywhere, so we wanted people to walk it and use it.”