The afterlife of Sterling Laundry

The art deco Sterling Laundry building located at 4819 Harrisburg Blvd. was about to be cleared, along with its neighbors, to make way for the newest East End incarnation of light rail in Houston. It will still be cleared, but a compromise is underway as stated in this City of Houston news release:

Vice Mayor Pro Tem Sue Lovell, District H Council Member Ed Gonzalez, and At-Large Position 3 Council Member Melissa Noriega are pleased to announce that a historic structure in Houston's East End-the Sterling Laundry & Cleaning Co. façade at 4819 Harrisburg Blvd.-has been saved. This was accomplished through an effort between the Council Members, METRO, and leaders of the surrounding neighborhood. The façade will be saved and then relocated to Eastwood Park, where it will remain a part of the streetscape on Harrisburg, as it has been since 1935.

As chair of the City of Houston historic preservation committee, Vice Mayor Pro Tem Lovell thanks all the partners who have participated in saving this historic structure. "These are the kinds of partnerships that are needed to save our history as the city continues to grow and develop."

Details will follow as to the timing of the façade removal and relocation.

Eastwood Park, just across the way from Sterling Laundry, might be the recipient of the façade but as folks on the Houston Architecture Info forum have noticed, sometimes ripping off the front of a building and plopping it down somewhere else can just be a little awkward - take the Gulf Publishing building on Allen Parkway tacked on to the Royalton, or the Chicago Stock Exchange building - the façade at the Art Institute of Chicago - as examples. METRO gave a nice rendition of what the Sterling Laundry implant may look like in several images, as seen on Swamplot. All in all, most would argue that the building isn't significant and that the relocation of its defining feature - the art deco façade, is better preserved this way in light of the progress of the rail (after all, we're slowly, and I mean slowly rebuilding what was taken away by 1942 - 90 miles of track) and its predecessors - two residences now long gone. Houston, let's take what we can get.