Preservation: Wyatt Earp's House
By: TW Editors 09/01/2007
Houston, We Have a Problem
“The Bender and Brazos hotels that attracted the turn of the century cafe society, had best look to their laurels,” stated a promotion for Hotel Cotton, which featured bathrooms in every guest room—a luxury back in 1913.
Later renamed the Montagu, the hotel outlived both of Houston’s prominent hotels. The Brazos, adjacent to the Southern Pacific Railroad station, was demolished in 1931 to make room for a new terminal; the second Brazos Hotel was razed in 1980. The Bender, built in 1911 and later renamed San Jacinto Hotel, was demolished in 2004.
But now a skyscraper, which Texas’ largest city has plenty of, is going to take the place of almost an entire block of historic buildings—including the Montagu.
Houston developer Hines will start building a 47-story office tower in?March 2008. To make room for it, the company will tear down the 1912 Beatty-West Building, which originally housed David R. Beatty’s oil and gas operation, the 1940 former Bond Clothes store, part of what was once the largest retail chain of men’s clothing in the U.S., and the 1913 Montagu Hotel, downtown’s oldest continuously operating hotel. The developer will save one building, the restored Stowers Building, built in 1913 as the headquarters for Stowers furniture manufacturing.
Its efforts to save the buildings having failed, the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance has asked Hines to incorporate the Bond store’s Art Deco interior into its design, but Hines has not officially agreed to do so. 713-216-5000 • ghpa.org
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