Houston Chronicle: Business//Real Estate
By Katherine Feser, Staff writer Dec 20, 2024
Houston’s vast stock of ranch-style houses is diminishing, one teardown at a time, and with them go pockets of midcentury modern homes, the flashier sibling of the more humble single-story residences.
For aficionados of the style, the loss is making them ever harder to find.
“From a real estate standpoint, if people have their heart set on one, the one thing I tell everybody is you have to go where the houses are,” said Robert Searcy, a Realtor who tracks midcentury modern homes.
Midmods, as they are sometimes called, were built in the 1950s and 1960s and are characterized by clean lines, flattened or butterfly roofs, clerestory windows that follow the roof line, and floor-to-ceiling windows. For the period, they had relatively open floor plans that might include an atrium.
Some would be finished with poured-in-place terrazzo floors. Flashes of the pastel colors of the time could be found in the floors or in kitchen and bath counters of Formica. It was the beginning of the Space Age, and its influence can be seen in some of the homes’ light fixtures and textiles.
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Not as prevalent as the standard midcentury ranch, they popped up in clusters in Sharpstown, Meyerland and Westbury, early versions of “master planned communities” that were being built to house Houston’s population boom of the ’50s and ’60s.
But changing tastes and, in some cases, the destructive floods of Hurricane Harvey, have led to the demise of many. Prices for those that remain can vary from $200,000 for a well-worn model to $2 million for a well-maintained example in Memorial, Searcy said. Established suburban areas such as Clear Lake and Baytown also have some mid-mods, and there are a few in northwest Houston such as the Champions area.
“You can usually count on one hand what is available in the context of what you’re looking for,” Searcy said.
Glenbrook Valley, along Sims Bayou near Hobby Airport, has been designated a historic district for its collection of midcentury moderns.
A 1956 Parade of Homes brochure describes several of the neighborhood’s new homes, many along Cayton street, including a “Suburban Styline” model with a large covered porch and turquoise and tan kitchen.
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Other popular areas for midcentury modern homes include inner Loop neighborhoods such as Woodshire and Woodside off Stella Link and Braeswood Place, and a bit farther out in Willow Meadows and neighborhoods along Braeswood Boulevard.
On the west side, the vintage style can be found in Spring Branch and Memorial. In Memorial Bend, a postwar neighborhood with opera theme streets along Beltway 8 near CityCentre, grand scale new homes have replaced many of the original midcentury and midmods destroyed by Hurricane Harvey.
Due to timing, some of Houston’s most popular neighborhoods don’t have any midcentury moderns.
“People ask for them in the Montrose and the Heights,” Searcy said. “Those neighborhoods weren’t always what they are today. They were going through a decline cycle in the ’50s and ’60s. They weren’t building mod palaces.”
“It takes timing and luck and patience to find the right ones,” Searcy said. “There’s a lot of buyers that come looking for midcentury moderns and they end up with an arts and craft bungalow because they can’t land one.”