HISTORY PRESERVED
Cluster of renovated homes in Truxillo Gardens a tribute to the late preservationist
The cluster of small bungalows on Ovid Street in First Ward look simple enough, but the fact that they are still there is a testament to the dedication of historic preservationists, who mark their successes one structure at a time.
There’s a sign over the doorway of one, advertising palm readings. For a small fee, you can learn your fate in love and relationships. Behind it is a square yellow structure showing the wear of its nearly 100 years, clearly waiting for some construction love.
Two more homes sit like shiny pennies with fresh coats of white paint, tidy front porches and small but neatly groomed yards. One has already sold to a young couple and the other just got a for-sale sign for its front yard.
Laura and Evan Michaelides of Four Square Design Studio purchased the large lot with four homes and renamed it Truxillo Gardens, after the late preservationist Bart Truxillo, who died in 2017. (They divided the land into three plots, keeping two lots with one home each and selling the third lot with two smaller homes to Sarah Hannah, a designer at Four Square.)
Truxillo — a familiar name to many Houstonians — was a Louisiana native
who moved here in 1950, graduating from the University of Houston’s architecture school in 1968.
He saw value in old buildings as a young man and just a few years out of college renovated the 1910 Magnolia Brewery Building. He saw charm in the Heights back when it was a rundown neighborhood that most people avoided and made his home in the spacious Victorian at 18th and Harvard streets.
After renovations, the Victorian and his Galveston vacation home were both listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When he died unexpectedly a few years ago, Truxillo owned several properties, including the four rental homes that the Michaelides purchased.
The Michaelides’ Four Square office space on Summer Street — a Queen Anne-style cottage built in 1905 — was an earlier project, and its renovation earned them a 2013 Good Brick Award from Preservation Houston. Four years later, the renovation of the former Dentler Building — a former potato chip factory that is now their home — earned them another.
Evan Michaelides launched the effort to create a historic district in First Ward, eventually leading to that designation for an area with 64 homes.
“When we bought the studio (on Summer Street), that first year it seemed like every week another old house was being torn down,” Laura Michaelides said. “Having that (historic) district has worked in the sense that every house in that district, even ones that weren’t restored, are getting bought and restored. They have all become valuable.”
“We wanted to give people the confidence that you can buy and restore a home and then not end up with a cottage that’s flanked by really tall townhomes,” Evan Michaelides added.
Their home and Four Square’s offices are across the street from one another, and the Truxillo properties are just four blocks away. The Michaelides could see the properties while driving on Houston Avenue and were taken with the charming houses, their mature shade trees and colorful
heirloom roses.
“We saw the for-sale sign — in First Ward, people knock things down pretty indiscriminately — and we thought ‘this neighborhood doesn’t need another townhome,’ ” Laura Michaelides said of the purchase. “That block of Ovid is one of the few pristine blocks in First Ward.”
The four Craftsman-style bungalows they bought were built in 1926, and their original size ranged from around 500 square feet to 880 square feet.
While Hannah dealt with one of her buildings — the one where the palm reader lives and works — the Michaelides tackled the bungalow at 1510 Ovid. A young couple purchased it before it was finished, and the home earned a
2020 Good Brick Award.
Hannah and the Michaelides agreed on exterior paint colors and fencing so the homes in Truxillo Gardens would be cohesive. The shotgun house that Hannah already restored — where the fortune teller lives — is just 500 square feet but required a gut job and complete renovation, finishing it as a rental.
The only home left to renovate is one of Hannah’s, the 732square-foot building at the back of the property, actually bearing a Houston Avenue address.
“That one is wonderful inside, in the sense that it is very original. It has nice original beadboard, original flooring and doors. It’s a mess, but it’s no more of a mess than any of the
others,” Laura Michaelides said.
All of the structures had been rentals for a long time, but significant repairs and updates likely hadn’t ever been done. Interior walls went up in strange, unorthodox ways, and dark paint colors — green, blue and purple — had been used throughout.
For the first home they renovated, the Michaelides removed interior walls to create a single living/dining/kitchen area with a vaulted ceiling instead of separate small rooms. Bedrooms run alongside, sharing a bathroom — basically forming a onestory four-square-style home. At 1,050 square feet, it sold for $418,500.
Then they turned to 1508, which they just finished and
listed for sale. The home still had many of its original materials, so the floors and windows were refinished and used in the gut job
A suite added to the back of the home expands the square footage to 1,619 and creates a bigger primary bedroom, bath and large closet plus a bonus room that someone could use as an office, gym or kids’ playroom.
Laura Michaelides, a licensed interior designer, finished the home not as a rental but as if she might live in it herself, using white oak floors, walnut kitchen cabinets, quartz counters, shiplap ceilings and La Nova and Ann Sacks tile.