HOUSTON — (By Ken Fountain, Contributing Writer, Realty News Report) – The historic Kirby Mansion was demolished Monday morning, just hours after preservationists and protesters held a candlelight vigil in hopes of saving the landmark on the edge of downtown Houston.
The demolition, reportedly made to make room for a gas station and convenience store on the Smith Street property, caught many lovers of architecture and history off-guard. The destruction began on Friday before work was halted by city officials, who said a proper demolition permit had not been issued.
Despite protests that continued over the weekend, the demolition resumed early Monday morning, Jim Parsons of the advocacy group Preservation Houston told Realty News Report.
Destruction machinery flattened the 36-room Tudor Revival mansion, which originally had been built in the late 1800s and was then extensively remodeled and expanded in 1926 by timber and oil magnate John Henry Kirby, one of Houston’s earliest movers-and-shakers. Kirby is the namesake of Kirby Drive and many other landmarks throughout Houston and Southeast Texas.
The building, which Kirby sold in the 1940s after suffering business setbacks during the Great Depression, had served as the Houston headquarters of the American Red Cross for about three decades and was then used as business offices.
The last owner to occupy the building was the late attorney Philip Azar, who lived in the mansion and used it as his law firm’s offices.
Since Azar’s death, the property changed hands a couple of times before being acquired in October by OB Texas Properties LLC, an entity led by Omair Bashir, president of BrakeTime Corner Market, a chain of 300 convenience stores.
Parsons said that after learning of the October sale of the property, his preservation organization reached out to Bashir to discuss the property, located at 2000 Smith Street. Parsons said there was a brief email exchange with Omair Bashir, but substantive discussion could not be arranged.
On Monday, as equipment moved in to complete the demolition, efforts to reach the Bashir organization were unsuccessful, Parsons said.
The demolition has renewed attention on the city’s long-standing reputation as one that doesn’t do enough to protect its history.
On Sunday afternoon, while half the building remained intact while the other half lay in rubble, a vigil organized by Ken McKinney of Mister McKinney’s Historic Houston, drew protesters and curious onlookers, as well as many folks involved in preserving Houston’s built history. McKinney has created a website. SaveHoustonHistory.com, to call attention to the issue.
(photo: Ken Fountain for Realty News Report)
Among those attending the vigil was Stephen Fox, the prominent architectural historian who serves as a lecturer at the architectural schools of both Rice University and the University of Houston.
Fox told reporters that John Henry Kirby bought the property, with its already existing house, in the elite area known as the South End. After greatly expanding his fortune with the discovery of oil on his East Texas holdings, he expanded the house in the mid-1920s.
“The story was that he had a superstition about living in a totally new house, so he retained some elements of the 1894 house,” Fox said.
What made the expansion distinctive is that Kirby, whom Fox said was somewhat eccentric in his tastes, rebuilt the house as a 1920s-era “country house” among the Victorian Era-mansions that dominated the South End.
Fox said the demolition points to a peculiarity of Houston’s preservation ordinance: property owners must agree to have most properties officially designated as historic before they can receive official protection.
“In the end if you don’t have city preservation ordinances that allow [the city] to designate properties, as opposed to having owners’ permission to designate properties, you don’t really have any alternatives,” he said.
Parsons told Realty News Report that he and Preservation Houston hope that the uproar over the demolition could help move city officials to enact changes that could prevent an unpermitted demolition from happening again, affording opportunities to help preserve some of the elements of any historic structure.
“If this can happen to the Kirby Mansion, it can happen to anything,” Parsons said.
Nov. 2, 2026 Realty News Report Copyright 2026
Photos by Ken Fountain, Realty News Report photo Copyright 2026 and Preservation Houston.
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File: Historic Kirby Mansion Demolished to Make Way for a Gas Station