Harvard House · 1979–2000
“Antiquity with modern class”
1982
From the source
“ANTIQUITY with modern class, and prestige. New Hi-Rise Condo $318,600. 3-2½-½ four levels, large terrace. 1100 Harvard, Houston Heights, Mr. Terry, 861-7170.”
Houston Post classifieds, March 1982. Clip sr1205409353, research archive.
Price the ad honestly: $318,600 in 1982 is roughly a million dollars in today’s money, asked for a Heights address years before the Heights was fashionable again. The seller had federal wind at his back. The 1981 tax act had just created a 25 percent historic-rehabilitation credit, setting off the largest old-building conversion boom in American history; it would peak in 1985, the very year this building’s condominium declaration was filed.
Developer T. S. Terry’s $3 million conversion sold the building on its own terms. The display ads, placed by Turner Owens Properties beneath a drawing of the 1930 facade, offered “prestigious mid-rise condominium homes” with French doors, terraces, and wine cellars, “in the shadows of downtown Houston.” The oil bust arrived mid-campaign and bent the project toward leasing for a stretch; the building itself did not bend.
Four decades on, the copy needs no forgiveness. Antiquity, modern class, and the shadows of downtown are now simply the listing facts, and the fourteen homes the campaign created are still here.
The source
