Special Exhibition The Collection of Gray Bungalows Around the Menil Collection Is About To Be Down One

For the past 2 weeks, workers have been gutting the gray-painted 1940s bungalow at 1408 Sul Ross St., opposite the Rothko Chapel. In some cases, they’ve chucked the removed house parts in the dumpster that’s parked in the driveway.

In other cases, they’ve been saving them for reuse by stockpiling them inside:

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The disappearing act is intended to make way for a new complex of buildings that the Rothko Chapel’s overseers plan to plant across the street from the chapel itself. (It has its own work cut out for it: A new louvered skylight system designed by George Sexton — whose firm did work on the Menil Drawing Institute — will be installed in the chapel during a temporary closure beginning next March 4.) Not all of the across-the-street additions will be new construction: The 2-story bungalow shown below on the right — next to the one that’s biting the dust — will be shifted over onto a currently-empty lot to its east and turned into a guest house for visiting VIPs.

That’ll leave 2 adjacent Rothko-owned lots cleared for construction on one of the planned new buildings, dubbed the “Welcome House” and designed by New York architectural firm ARO.

The Rothko board had for years been working quietly with the firm, reports the Chronicle‘s Molly Glentzer, to come up with a new master plan for the entire Rothko campus that includes that new building, along with a few more that won’t be finished until at least 2022, a year after the chapel’s 50th birthday.