dragonfly

If the Maxwell House was ever a grand hotel, it wasn't I don't think when it burned, based on the certainty they would have installed a sprinkler system. BTW the Maxwell House was home to a substantial contingent of downtown residents. Imagine at that time losing evrything and maybe not able to find another residence in your downtown. Another story of stupidity and lack of foresight kind of like when the legislature chose not to acquire the Polk Mansion for the governors residence. They just did not conceive of the idea of tourism as an industry important to Tennessee and preserving all of the architectural attractions. You guys that missed the completion of my previous post, I had to interrupt to go back to bed at 5:00, but the Teddy Roosevelt story is told on the 100th anniversary coffee can (pictured) that I bought in Houston a few miles from where it was made (pictured). As with all things, the coffee plant lifetime is over unfortunately, just does not have the tourist draw of an old hotel or president's home. Apparently (from coffee can) there was a radio show named "The Maxwell House Showboat" during the depression.

My dad was working at L&C at the time of the fire. I was 11 y.o. on Christmas break, and took a bus downtown to see him at his office and have lunch the day after the fire. There were still fire engines parked around, hoses laying everywhere and because of the chaos, I got disoriented and found myself about 100 feet behind the roped off area stepping over hoses and noticed the crowds on the other side. I heard a police whistle and a yelled order at me from a cop, with everyone looking at me. My thinking oddly was of embarrassment, hoping my 6th grade teacher (a gay guy living in a 4~6? story bldg just east of Murphy on West End) was not in that crowd. That was the year West Meade elementary opened, where he taught us. Bought the 100th anniversary coffee package at the Montrose Kroger about 4 miles from the plant where they made it on the other side of downtown Houston. A lot of plumbing needed to make instant coffee. Teddy's slogan is seen at the top of the plant logo in picture form. Based on the story on the coffee can, Maxwell House coffee was certainly served here:

Thx, here's more.

This location is on the southern border of the artsy Montrose district which extends from US 59 (aspiring to be I-69) on the south to Allen Parkway on the north. Across 59 is the very tony Southhampton which abuts the Museum district with Rice U and the Texas Medica center and Hermann Park conglomerated all around. The southern end of downtown is probably 3 miles away. Close in incorporated township of West University Place is a mile or two in the other direction. I would think the closest equivalent in Nashville would be 440 at 21st/ Hillsboro Rd. or West End.

Things seem really wrong there. Nashville and Raleigh larger markets than San Diego? Orlando larger than Cleveland, St. Louis, Pittsburg?

from a vegetarian perspective in Houston, this gotta be more healthy: https://www.yelp.com/menu/velvet-taco-houston/item/nashville-hot-tofu

That Hillsboro neighborhood got reconfigured in '71~'72. I don't remember the connector being named Magnolia but I certainly remember riding it on my Honda 305 Scrambler. My dad and his family moved from Atlanta to Nashville when he was 14 for about a 3 year period in the late '30's, and the house they lived in was razed to put in the connector. As you can imagine, commuter traffic through Hillsboro Village to 21st was the reason, plus converting 16th and 17th to one-way. I alsorecall driving through those neighborhoods when the streets were being torn up but still driveable.

Can I say something about our country? So far as how "people of color feel constantly" and whether or not we should imagine it "constantly" I do know how one person of color feels about the country, by the name of Wynton Marsalis. A guy who has spent decades traveling and performing on every country on the planet. I don't remember the context and whether some person resenting the USA was baiting him but he responded with his opinion. And from his knowledge of other countries he definitively declared this country to be the best in existence, period. I know that negating that is supposed to help a sector attain power, but there is an example of a guy feeling what he feels without the swaying from power plays of people wanting to refute or recruit him. And beyond all that I myself feel (at the moment) a need to defend the nation and will post here a 2019 paper from the National Academy of Sciences that does the same: "Officer characteristics and racial disparities in fatal officer-involved shootings" ----> https://www.pnas.org/content/116/32/15877.short

The First American National Bank Bldg, 28 stories on the far right (UBS Tower), was announced in spring '72, when I was a couple of weeks away from graduation from VU. I assume the page of skyscrapers date of 1974 correct. Since the National Life bldg (Snodgrass) had topped out in '68, and the last one to complete, it was kind of exciting for the city to get a new (my preferred cutoff of 18+) tower announced 4 years later. (a 17 story state office bldg had gone up in between.) BTW never mentioned it on here before but there were these handsome old stately townhouses across from the former Kissam Quadrangle, at the NW corner of West End and 21st, for about a block west, and about a half block north on 21st where Lowes hotel is, with some businesses on the ground floors. The last few of years of their life, students had rented the upper floor apartments of those buildings and I visited sometimes. Everyone knew they were coming down and at the same time First American tower was announced there was another tentative project announced, a 31 story hotel, cylindrical tower footprint for where the Lowes is now. Supposedly several years away, and like many, it got scaled back. My 3rd and final Nashville residency ended in '75 and I don't know when that hotel actually got built but I know of another exciting project that got started in '75 and it was the downtown thermal plant, representing the future in environmental /conservation thinking.

OK so I did an estimate with ruler, assuming the guy on scissor lift at 5'10' and assuming 5000 kg/m^3 glass density: Glass plate 25' x 8.5' x 4" x (1/12) ft/in = 71 ft^3 ... x 5000 kg/m^3 x 2.2 lbm/kg x (.305 m/ft)^3 = 22,000 lb.

My brother is rehabbing his rent house in Soddy Daisy for sale, and told me a few days ago that the average time on the market for that Chatt'burb is 3 days. Good school district there.

I hang with the musical types here in Houston and over the last 12 years known of two young guys from here who enrolled there for music, specifically guitar studies. Which is saying a lot, I think., considering UNT in Denton is such a strong music draw in Texas. On of them got kicked out because he had an antique rifle in his room. He didn't leave town, found a touring gig.

I visit Birmingham several times per year since my sister and her family are there. I know it pretty well, and like it a lot, for quite different reasons than my fondness for Nashville. Gonna go have a look and comment. My username on that site is groovamos.

Shell Oil beat you to it. Or should we say Skidmore Owings & Merril. The above (1968) was a good practice run for these by the same firm: One Shell Plaza Houston 1971 50 stories: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1v3xbcs3504ftrjd_PzxOTV7Z7MioT8us One Shell Square New 0rleans 1972 51 stories: https://drive.google.com/open?id=138lfpbJ8gjo3UbOV20ou9cXA7po6wQn0 The Houston building has splayed out base and the NO building (city's tallest) does not from what I can tell, correct me otherwise. The NO building was recently renamed Hancock Whitney Tower, the merging of a Mississippi bank and a New Orleans one (I have an account with them from Bank of Houston days). Some of the Royal Dutch Shell operation in NO was moved to Houston, but Shell's deepwater operation still employ ~1000 in the NO tower.

The G in STG is DeWitt Gayle who I knew at Vanderbilt, and a few years later shared a house with him in Austin when we were both in graduate school at UT. He grew up in Houston and was at the same high school and friends with Billy Gibbons. I met Billy and he was intrigued that I knew DeWitt, and was quite happy that I was able to tell him of the dramatic success of our friend. DeWitt loves Nashville almost as much as he does Austin which I'm sure is the reason his firm located an office there. He visits Nashville frequently. The firm has a Houston office too.

I believe I patronized a pool hall on the second floor of that bldg back in '69?

Well unfortunately for Archie and the rest of us Houstonians the team didn't sufficiently tighten it up today. Was hoping for another matchup between the T-T's and H-T's. 75th birthday party: https://www.houstonpress.com/music/things-to-do-archie-bell-turns-75-with-celebration-at-the-continental-club-11341553

Would be interested in links to the claims of these individuals, preferably self-identified.

True and L.A. has a few extra-CBD clusters of urban density in Westwood, Century City, and Wilshire BL, and whichever I don't know about. Also is the L.A. metro pop. not north of 12 million?

For anyone interested : Hines Interests (Gerald Hines, 93) developed the Houston Galleria, and the adjacent 65 story Tranco tower and many scores of other large scale projects worldwide, and around Texas especially Houston. They develop and operate their own properties and sell them off variously after appreciation. When I first moved to Houston in '89 I pulled up into his driveway to pick up a lady friend baby sitting for him in one of the the high end (of course) Memorial Villages municipalities. The bizjournal piece says this project is the arrival of Hines in Nashville which you could say is another indication that Nashville has arrived. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_D._Hines

Oh OK. Was thinking I was making a contribution to the thread. I've probably said it before on here,in years past, but my dad got hired away from The Equitable in Atlanta by L&C in '55, so I may be the only one on here with that kind of memory of L&C before there was a tower, plus getting to see it (the lobby & my dad's department) when it opened. The "developers" were Guilford Dudley and the board. I'm just a bit aware of what was claimed for the building since I and my family were, you could say, linked to its advent, and my dad had a clay ashtray with the original design sticking up out of the corner, which was quite different from the final one. And the story of why that ashtray design got scaled back. If you guys are interested. But feeling a little standoffish right now with no need of discussion looming.

The Gulf Oil building in Houston was built in '29 and is 430 feet, now with a different name. So the above should be qualified further as in the Southeast. Would be interested if the Louisiana Capitol bldg is taller than the old Houston tower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JPMorgan_Chase_Building_(Houston) BTW the Texas capitol bldg is just shy of 304 feet tall. Furthermore btw there was a very long thread on the Houston C-D forum as to whether Houston could be considered an outpost of the southeast. I gave one of the most comprehensive answers as to how the argument could be made in the affirmative, since I grew up in the SE, (Atlanta and Nashville), and all my immediate and distant family did too. It turned out to be a highly contentious debate. I would post a link but that may go against the rules here. Maybe I could cut and paste.

I transferred into Vanderbilt engineering fall '69 from U Chattanooga which became UTC that very fall semester. By that time I had made it my business to have a good knowledge of metros around the country because of meeting people from them at college. i remember spending time in the UC library looking at population tables in the Information Please Almanac. So in 1970 Nashville metro was 600K and Atlanta was 1.3M+. Houston was 1.8M, smaller than Nashville present. I think Austin was about 350K and Charlotte somewhere between Austin and Nashville. Chicago was right at 8M metro (where my parents had relocated by then), Detroit at 5M. Los Angeles had surpassed Chicago in metro and city pop maybe around '66. I remember in the Vanderbilt engineering school seeing on a bulletin board in ca. '71 someone had posted an authoritative clipping with projected 1980 metro population for Nashville at 900K and it was well known at that time that Nashville was growing much faster than Memphis. So sure enough I was not going to let that memory go saved without checking those almanacs after 1980 for the census figures. The Nashville metro was 850K and Memphis was 910K in 1980. Austin was about 550K I think, as I was living there at the time, 1980. So currently, intriguing it is to understand that metro Houston (my domicile) is, at 7M approaching the 1970 population of Chicagoland where I spent my summers during college (@ Arlington Heights). The DFW metroplex is already there at 8M currently. And btw all those decades was sort of anticipating Nashville crossing that 1M metro population eventually (since I grew up there), which, turned out it had just reached in the 1990 census. Although I have seen somewhere that there was some controversy over what constituted the Nashville metro at that time.

As fast as Austin is growing now, I'm pretty sure that Austin grew 35% between 1980 and 1985 when I was living there, if anyone remembers or can verify that. I think those years inclusive meaning a 6 year period, ending with the recession that forced me to move to Houston for work. Question: I looked around to see if Austin has a 5 star hotel, and could not determine so if you could tell me if one exists or is being built. They just broke ground on Nashville's second 5 star property, a Four Seasons 40 story located across the street from the riverbank. I will say this about Nashville and it is astonishing, but they have been in the top 5 hotel building metros for several years, in numbers of rooms under construction: https://www.nreionline.com/hotel/eight-busiest-cities-hotel-development/gallery?slide=5.

Since I'm out of state and don't need to read the Tennessean that much would it be bending the rules to ask y'all for a PM with some text from that article? My brother is in the Chattanooga and I would like to see what it says and discuss w him.