Humpalow?

Houstonians are opinionated folks, and, as a large and diverse city, we represent a multiplicity of ideas about many subjects.  That is, we like to argue a lot about almost everything.  If you have an afternoon you'd like to totally waste, Google "Houston No Zoning" and you can read about the city's lack of the traditional zoning codes that separate commercial, industrial, and residential areas in other cities, whether that actually constitutes "no zoning" due to the strict policies that many homeowners' associations adopt, and whether or not this schizophrenic approach to urban development is a good thing or a bad thing.  Lots of people, lots of opinions.

One tiny bit of this argumentativeness concerns my house.  Part of the discussion of how Houston approaches urban planning touches our use of old and even historic buildings; typically, we bring a bulldozer.  Of the 17 homes that were the first to be built in my neighborhood (around 1893), only 3 still stand.  My new-ish apartment building stands on the lot where Kaplan's Ben-Hur, an independent, family-owned department store, operated from 1913 until 2005 in their own art-deco building with 1960's expansion and renovation (until the bulldozers came).  And I'm not going to talk about the Astrodome again, I promise.

But this pattern isn't a universal truth.  Old buildings downtown are being used to make new, cooler-than-thou places to hang out and live, we do have a historic preservation ordinance, and a good chunk of the population is taking interest in Houston's old places.  Even our sides are divided into sides, though.  My house, for instance, was built before 1920 and is clearly in the original plat of the Houston Heights dating to 1891 but is less than a block outside the historic district.  I'm a little sad about this, yes, because I want a cool little marker on my street sign as recognition that my house is awesome and old, and I want it to be difficult to totally scrap the remaining bungalows on my street.

This is the house next door to mine.  A developer owns it and is going to bulldoze it to build this.

I'm THAT lady.  I'm mostly glad we're not in the historic district, though, because its sounds like the rules that the people on the Historical Commission enforce are arbitrary and difficult, and don't necessarily "preserve" the house as well as they might.

Here's what I mean:  readers of a local real-estate blog, Swamplot, gave the 2012 Award for "Favorite Houston Design Cliche" to "humper houses," or "humpalows," bungalows with an ugly, awkward hump on the back.  Go, read the comments.  People have, um, very strong feelings about these houses (FYI: It won because people HATE humpalows).  To be fair, this style is favored by the Historical Commission because it adds a lot of square footage to the house without changing the original facade.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, totally what I'm doing to my house.  The Commission also makes the argument that the "camelback" style IS in fact a historically accurate way of adding space to a shotgun or bungalow style of house, a reference to the days when you were taxed for the number of windows on the front of your house (this is a New Orleans thing, I think, though I can't find a reference for it and have possibly made it up).

Despite the opinions of my fellow Houstonians, I'd like to think that my house is NOT a "design atrocity" (as one commenter put it), and as the roof and sheathing get put on, I think I have strong evidence that it's not.

Here's the house that Swamplot used as their exemplar of the humper house style ; it's in the historic district, and actually, just down the street from me.  I do not like this house, and maybe, in my heart of hearts, I think it's a design atrocity and agree with the haters.  The addition is blocky and juts up abruptly from the old house--there's no flow to it at all.  Yes, the facade is intact, the original house still exists, and this is pretty true to the "camelback" silhouette.  Better than the bulldozer?

I'm not a fan of this one either--this addition is too busy.  It doesn't go with the rest of the house.  I've been inside this one when it was for sale, and the inside was weird and had no flow.  The old front part of the house was a long, gutted gallery, and it felt like the house actually started when you got to the addition.  It was truly two different houses stuck together.  But it might still look kind of like a bungalow from the street, and it's still one family home on one lot instead of three townhouses crammed into one lot (that happens a good bit in my neighborhood).  For Houston, that might be progress.

There are a lot of flavors of humpalow; some are grosser than others.

Yuk.

OK.

Bleh.

Our house is undeniably a giant addition crammed onto a little old house.

RAWR. Giant addition.  Where's the old house?

I'd like to think we're doing it "right."  Here's the same viewpoint from which I took the pictures of other houses (though I inexplicably failed to use the right lens):

For whatever reason, it doesn't seem to have the "mass" that other humpalows do.  I think that's in part because our nice trees hide what's going on back there, but I think our house also has a design that occupies that sweet spot between "giant cracker box" and "too silly/busy with gables and details and foolishness."  And when you're standing in front of the house, you can't see the addition at all.

At the end of the front walk. What giant addition?

From across the street.  Leetle bits of roof peeking out.

So you decide.  I know all of our neighbors and everyone driving by has an opinion about whether or not our house is an "atrocity" or pretty nice, so you're welcome to yours as well.  (Pretty nice!  Pretty nice!)  Coming soon--windows!