John Staub's Mosbacher Mansion Demolished

The 7,300+ square foot home on an over 145,000 square foot lot built for Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Mosbacher at 405 W Friar Tuck Ln. and designed by architect John Staub is no more. Swamplot's informative Daily Demolition Report noted that the home land is still listed for sale, but the permit was issued last Friday to tear down the house. The HAR listing also has taken down all interior photos of the house, but here are a few of them.

The property is listed for $5,000,000, and HCAD appraisers give it a market and appraised value of $4,392,089 (the house demolished making up over $1.2 million of that value for 2008, but only $600,000 in 2007). It also states that the house was remodeled in 2005.

Howard Barnstone's The Architecture of John F. Staub: Houston and the South states:

The style of the Mosbacher house is best described as as a cross between an American Georgian house and a Louisiana plantation house. The shuttered windows and shingled dormers recall the former, the slender brick piers and colonnades the latter. Staub introduced an irregularly spaced rear colonnade and Chippendale-like woodwork in lieu of conventional balusters. The colonnade, once carried along the entire rear elevation of the house, has since been abruptly terminated by the addition of an enclosed sitting room. In the front, Staub sought to vary the symmetry of the principal mass by placing the main entrance one bay off-center.

The Mosbacher estate sold the property in March 1979 to Giorgio Borlenghi, the president of Interfin, a "diversified real estate company specializing in the development, construction and management of landmark residential and commercial real estate projects." Borlenghi then sold it to ALV Interests in October 2007.