The Houston Business Journal reported that the Texas State Hotel has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Currently in the building is Club Quarters Hotel, but they weren't mentioned by name in the brief article even though the company applied for the register listing. The Texas State is a the corner of Fannin and Rusk and opened in 1929. Joseph Finger was the primary architect, and the cast terracotta detailing he often......

• Is Houston the only city in the U.S. with two competing Martin Luther King Day parades? The downtown parade starts at 10 a.m. while the second parade on Allen Parkway parade starts at noon. • A Houston couple want a state representative tested for STD's after they claim the woman was forcibly kissed by the legislator. • Three people were killed in three separate accidents over the weekend. • A prison inmate of......

Houstonist Flickr photo contributor espngo got up early this morning to witness the implosion of the Montagu Hotel, formerly the Hotel Cotton, which was built in 1913. Cherry Demolition was contracted to implode the building to make room for a new 46-story building dubbed The Pipe Wrench. Here's a video of the implosion from LiveLeak.......

More on Hines' proposed 47-story downtown skyscraper: The Chronicle has some details about the building and its design, and it looks like it really could be something different for the CBD. Plans call for the 630-foot building to be clad in glass, with the west facade featuring projecting vertical glass fins to shade offices from afternoon sunlight. Near the top of the building, on its east side, will be a notched opening that'll shelter......

Earlier this year, we talked about the downtown real estate boom: One Park Place, the apartment tower under construction at the edge of Discovery Green; Houston Pavilions, the retail and office complex being built on Main Street; and a few skyscrapers in the planning stages. Well, the Houston Business Journal reported on one of those proposed new buildings Friday: a 47-story skyscraper being planned by Hines in the 800 block of Main Street. There......

Houstonist admits that we have an odd fascination with seedy hotels. The Londale downtown is a good example: We look at its open windows, its sagging balcony, the general idea that the building stopped trying to impress anyone decades ago, and we wonder what's going on inside (not that we'd really want to know, of course — we probably wouldn't understand most of it anyway). So we were really interested to see the article yesterday......