Jump to content

plumber2

Full Member
  • Posts

    1,422
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    5

plumber2 last won the day on November 23 2012

plumber2 had the most liked content!

1 Follower

About plumber2

  • Birthday 01/30/1955

Contact Methods

  • Website URL
    http://
  • ICQ
    0

Profile Information

  • Location/ZIP Code
    Western Galveston County

Recent Profile Visitors

The recent visitors block is disabled and is not being shown to other users.

plumber2's Achievements

(21/32)

333

Reputation

  1. That hotel that you stayed at on your first trip to Galveston in 1975 was probably the former Jack Tar Hotel. It was known as the Islander Beach by then and for several years before it closed. When new it was once the swankiest place on the Gulf Coast, built by William Moody III as a protest of sorts to his family, which owned the Buccaneer, and Jean Lafitte hotels. His father and his brother's widow were at odds with him back then. His sister in-law then built the Sea Horse motel down the street on the seawall, to compete with him. The Sea Horse was a huge two story semi circular affair with Gulf facing rooms, that attracted guests from all over and competed directly with the Jack Tar. Galveston benefited greatly from this family feud back in those days. Both places started to wane in popularity however, and then the Moody's sold off most of their hotel properties in the 1960's and later on, but still hang on to a few noteworthy examples like the Menger Hotel in San Antonio, and the Driscoll in Austin.
  2. Plus this is not Memorial Drive. I suspect this shot is near the starting point of Allen Parkway. Memorial Drive would be a few blocks north of this point.
  3. ChrisABC13, seeing that photo snapped a few of my memory cells. I remember traveling out Fondren Rd with my mom, after a music lesson off Bissonett in Robindell around 1963 or 64. She was trying to take a short cut to Arcola to go to some catholic church meeting. We came upon that monorail structure and stopped to look at it. I was about 8 or 9 years old. She would not let me get out of the car to investigate, because she was late for that meeting. Plus she said there were probably snakes and things out there. By the time I was able to get someone to drive me back out there, it was all gone.
  4. The Orlando's that owned this store actually lived in Tanglewood. I went to school with one of the Orlando sons.
  5. I HATE Toll Roads. (Just in case I haven't mentioned that enough on this site.)
  6. Of course this railroad line had long been removed through the neighborhood by then, it's just that the city didn't care to remove the tracks in the pavement at this location where it crossed Westheimer. Sure they paved over it, and built curbs, sidewalks and such, but they left the rails embedded in the street for decades, causing it to be a bone rattler like so many other poorly maintained crossings back then. This was also true for the line that went down Greenbriar to Rice University (which curiously does not show up on the attached map). That long abandoned line had rails in the cross street intersections way up in into the 1980's.
  7. I remember a poorly maintained abandoned train track crossing on Westheimer about in front of what is present day Katz restaurant. It was horrible, and probably broke many a shock absorber. Why the city didn't just pull up the old tracks embedded in the pavement instead of just continually paving over it, I'll never know? It's been gone for years now, but I remember it still being there as a young driver as late as 1970. However I'm sure the GMC Dreamliners handled it much better than the Grumman's would have. Those Dreamliners were solid!
  8. Before the Shepherd 10 Business Park was built, the site was used for low income housing. There were several two story structures, of the post WWII barracks style construction. I'm sure the lower Heights residents were glad to see them go at the time. Now we a ready for the next use of this land. MKT looks like a good fit for this site, however it appears hard to get in and out of.
  9. Jack Roach Ford moved to a new building on the SW Freeway sometime during the late 60's, possibly early 1970. I remember being fascinated by rooftop parking lot, with a drive ramp on the back side. The building is still there, now being occupied by Noel furniture.
  10. Beto has that Kennedy style appeal going for him. He's probably got a better chance of beating Ted than either Joaquin or Julian. I wish him luck as he's not accepting any PAC money for his campaign. I'd rather see one of the Castro brother's take on Abbott for Governor or that rat fink Dan Patrick for Lt Governor, or even wait and take on Cornyn later on.
  11. The other one at the end of Golf Drive was what my dad referred to as the Heights Golf Course. He claimed to have caddied there for extra money when he was a kid. It apparently closed sometime around WWII and then it became developed as Sheperd Park Forest later on. I've also heard that the current Pine Forest Country Club on Clay Road is going to close. The members have sold the property to developers. History has a way of repeating itself. Us native Houstonians have been witness to it more often than we'd like.
  12. That is very sad. My mother worked/volunteered on fundraising activities for the Cenacle Sisters that operated a retreat center on the property. I have several postcard type pictures of the place as it looked in the late 1950's and early 1960's, that came from the small bookstore that the nuns operated inside of the building. Before I started school I would accompany my mother there on Monday's (her work day out there). The nuns would watch me, entertain me and feed me while my mother worked. She had a work office upstairs inside of the big house, that she shared with a nun she reported to (Sister Vandenberg). Sister Petra, the one that watched me was the cook. The nuns lived in a small house just to the west of the big house. The retreat buildings were behind the big house, and a wooden chapel was located just to the east of those buildings. I basically had the run of the place on these weekly visits. I was told not to go down by the lake (a lost bend from Oyster Creek I suspect). There was a small grotto and bench down there, but nobody went there because of the water moccasins, which I discovered on one of my forbidden trips down there. Yes I got in trouble when I told on myself. The Cenacle Sisters eventually built a new modern facility on Kirkwood in west Houston at Buffalo Bayou in the mid 1960's. I have never had reason to go back to the Scanlan place after that. I'm really surprised it had lasted this long.
  13. That's exactly were it was, up against Ave B. There was a long hedge lined walkway from the convent over to it. We had a class function/party there in 1970 when I was a sophomore. No one went swimming though. I think it was too cold that day. It was strictly part of the convent, not the school. Students had to have a reason to even be on that part of the property. It was a typical 60's outdoor gunite pool, with pee gravel surrounding it. Not that big either, from what I remember. There was a diving board and a life guard stand believe it or not. I guess Sister Mary Somebody would be on duty if students went swimming. Can't believe I remember all that. Edit: Map of City of Bellaire Sec. 1 Westmoreland Farms, Harris County, Texas. May 1, 1949
  14. Awesome photo you discovered there Tejano. This was propoably one of the outer structures on the propoerty and not the main Simms house, as the main house was a larger plantation style home, which was 3 stories. I know this because a group of us high schoolers were in it one night in 1970 or possibly 1971. It was empty and pretty trashed out at that time. We were coming down from the third floor when a group of guys (probably east enders) cornered us and wouldn't let us by. They were acting kind of bullyish toward us until the girls in our group shamed them into letting us by. Gotta love those hippie girls.
  15. CHI St Luke's still owns the St Luke's Tower on Bates St along with the now vacant 1950's era hospital building on Bertner. The Texas Heart Center building on Bertner is also owner by CHI St. Luke's. They did sell the O'Quinn Tower on Fannin and the Baylor Clinic building on Main St. to Texas Children's last year. Texas Children's would be the obvious purchaser of those remaining TMC buildings once CHI St Luke's fully moves all of it's services to the McNair campus. The two institutions share already common corridors, several entrances and some life safety systems in those original buildings anyway.
×
×
  • Create New...