The renovation

In 2000 the building came out of a renovation, and the Chronicle’s real estate pages reported brisk sales under the Harvard Place Lofts banner. The builder was Silvestri Homes of Texas; Ray Allison, Realtors carried the marketing. Five units had sold by June. The selling points were the temple’s own bones: an open four-story foyer with a chandelier lighting the way in, wide staircases and balustrades winding the full height of the building, an elevator, 13-inch masonry walls, 12-inch concrete floors between homes, and a rooftop sitting area with views of the Heights, downtown, and Post Oak.

Seventy years after Cato’s crews finished the marble, the building’s construction quality had become its sales brochure.