814 Columbia

This home for a family of five is in the Houston Heights, a historic neighborhood located within three miles of downtown Houston that features bungalows and Queen Anne style houses dating back to the 1920’s.

All projects in this district must meet Design Guideline Standards established by the City of Houston’s Historic Preservation Department. The goal is for new builds to be of their own time while still complementing existing houses, street features, materials, and massing.

Typical lots in this neighborhood have 50’ street frontages. This oversized double lot upon purchase had an existing one-story historic house on one lot and was empty on the other.

To maintain the existing block face rhythm, we negotiated a site-planning solution with the COH Historic Department that connects a new two-story addition to the existing one-story house with a transparent ‘hyphen”.

The front porch of the existing house was dilapidated and non-original. We replaced it with a modest elegant porch that references the new addition’s vocabulary. A new rear porch was created at the existing house by carving into the existing rear kitchen and bedroom to preserve yard space.

The new addition’s front porch references traditional wrap around porches, and the rear screened porch allows for year-round mosquito-free outdoor living!

Sustainability in the sealed construction addition is achieved by washing the first floor in natural light through shaded windows that step in from the second-floor massing. Exterior siding is fiber-cement board and thermally modified wood.