Feb 13, 2123 - Houston Chronicle

Two years ago, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston acquired another house museum, although this one stands out from Bayou Bend and Rienzi. Located on 2 acres in Midtown, this house museum is actually a series of apartments in one of the last remaining constructions of the early 2010s.

This style apartment complex was popular with residential developers in the 2010s and 2020s and could be found in suburban cities across the former United States. The developers would use inexpensive materials to build blocks and blocks worth of uniform studios, one, and two bedroom apartments to rent out to mostly Millennial and Gen Z tenants. These apartment complexes are rare to find these days since most of them have been torn down and replaced with the newly popularized everything high-rises.

I was invited to tour the new Hobby-Brown Apartments by the Museum earlier this month before they opened to the public. When you book tickets online, you have a choice of visiting either the studio apartments of a graduate student, an artist, and non-profit worker, or the two-bedroom apartments of a young newlywed couple and a technology worker. I personally went on the studio tour, but hope to return soon to do the other.

The Hobby-Brown Apartments have a traditional parking lot to leave your car in if you choose to drive. Otherwise, the Light Rail Red Line has a stop out front and you can still experience walking across the sunny lot. At the door, there is a sign requesting you “buzz in” - it will only unlock for you to enter if you do so. The wave of air conditioning that will hit you as the door swings open feels amazing, but make sure to bring a sweater as it can feel a bit cold inside after a while.

As you enter the lobby, you first pass a desk for checking in. This is one of the only things in the complex that was not here when it was inhabited. A single docent sat there, and they pointed me towards the leasing office while explaining that once they were fully open, that is where you would pick up your physical key for the tour. Since no one was staffing it that day, they handed me my key at the desk. To my right, there are two sterile couches for you to sit on while you wait for your tour to begin. I only had to wait a moment before one of the curators came down to meet me (the top floor is all office space for the museum specialists working on location).

She led me down the hallway to the left and as we passed the mail room, I was able to unlock one of the mail boxes and flip through recreated ephemera such as electricity and internet bills, a book of phone numbers known as Yellow Pages, and the tickets for a baseball game at Enron Field. The curator explained the uses of these objects to me, and the significance of their names (I had never heard of the Enron scandal but I realized I did know the ballpark as Minute Maid Park in my childhood).

The first apartment we toured belonged to the Gen Z grad student. The smallest of the three, it was sparsely decorated with just a bed, a dresser, a desk and desk chair, and some pots and pans in the kitchen. On the desk were old law books, dusty with age but seemingly carefully preserved. Next to them was a fully functioning Apple laptop from the 2010s, or at least what seemed to be. I clicked around and was able to look at the word processor they were writing a paper in, their email server called “G-Mail”, and see their calendar full of classes, appointments, and office hours. I opened the cabinets in the kitchen and found a few boxes of pasta, ready made soups, and various canned vegetables. We could even flush the old fashioned toilet in the bathroom - it was from before bidets came standard with your toilet!

The second apartment, belonging to the young millennial artist, was a very similar set up as the graduate student. The main difference was that instead of having a desk covered in school work, there were canvases strewn all across the apartment, and paint samples visitors can use to try their own hand at creating art. There were doodles on all of the walls and the curator told me the intention with this space is to create something that feels like a home for everyone, as well as teach visitors how they could personalize their homes, since everything has become so uniform in the world these days. In one corner, there is a tablet with a recreation of the early social media app Instagram where you can scroll through as series of ‘influencers’ showing you their “Do-It-Yourself” projects to make their apartments more unique.

The final apartment belongs to the older millennial non-profit worker. They lived in the largest of the studios and the layout included a nook for the bed off to the side of the room so it was out of the way of everything else. This apartment, while having the nicest furniture, also felt the most tired. If you know your design history, you would notice most of their belongings looked like they were from the 1990s or early 2000s. The non-profit worker would not have made all that much money, and the curator explained the online presence of the specific person who lived here suggested that they spent most of their extra cash on the immersive experiential craze that swept through the world at that time along with sporting events.

On our way back down to the lobby, the curator took me through the amenity spaces the building contained. There was a gym with ancient looking cardio machines and weights, a rooftop deck with grills and picnic tables, and downstairs behind the building was a large swimming pool with lap lanes, diving boards, and a small water slide. Chairs for lounging were strewn about and I could imagine the 20-somethings living there at the time hosting parties and having fun out here and on the deck upstairs. The MFAH plans to have events in these spaces as well - they were build for social events and the museum would like to build upon that.

As I left, I noticed a small collection of postcards that look like they are going to be for sale in the lobby, although if you want to view the MFAH’s entire store collection, you may have to visit them online or at their main location in the Museum District. The attendant at the desk took the keys back as I headed back out to the parking lot.

Tour tickets for the Hobby-Brown Apartments start at $175 and are now available Wednesday-Sunday.