Texas Mansion Safe for Five More Years
By Jimmy Scarano | From Preservation | Apr. 10, 2007
The James and Jessie West Mansion, one of the best-preserved Texas estates from the 1930s, has had a "for sale" sign on its lawn since October 2006. This month, preservationists, who feared that a developer could build high-rise apartments on the 41-acre waterfront property in the city of Pasadena, have delayed that fate for at least five more years.
Tipped off by a local resident, last week David Bush, director of information and progams at the Greater Houston Preservation Alliance, found a 1992 amendment to the house's deed that stipulates that the property must be preserved and maintained for the next 20 years. Anyone who wants to tear down the 17,000-square-foot Italian Renaissance mansion will have to wait until at least 2012.
Bush sent a letter last week explaining the deed to the city of Pasadena, the Texas Historical Commission, and the real-estate agents trying to sell the property and said he hopes this will shy land developers away from the site, located 20 miles southeast of Houston.
"Developers usually want to move in pretty quickly," says Bush, who has been receiving calls about the National Register-listed house since the "for sale" sign went up six months ago.
"It's in a really prominent location; people want to know what's going on," Bush says.
The phone calls became more frequent in February, after Preservation Texas, a statewide partner of the National Trust, named the West Mansion one of Texas' Most Endangered Historic Places.
"People came out of the woodwork," says Julianne Fletcher, director of Preservation Texas. "People who lived in the area were afraid it was going to be torn down."
Locals had good reason to be afraid, since there are no land-use regulations in Pasadena. "The only requirement is that [owners] provide notice to the Texas Historical Commission before substantially changing the exterior," Bush says.
James Marion West, an oil and lumber tycoon, built the limestone-and-concrete house in 1930 as the focal point of his 30,000-acre ranch. The land has been subdivided many times in the last 75 years, and the mansion itself has changed hands several times, serving its most famous stint as the Lunar Science Institute for Rice University from 1969-1991.
Before Rice University sold its 41-acre parcel in 1992 to the Pappas family, the school changed the mansion's deed. The Pappas family sold the house last October to Olajuwon Farms, a property-management company owned by former Houston Rockets star Hakeem Olajuwon, which intends to subdivide and sell the land.
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