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    Native Houstonian now out of Texas
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    Architecture, History, Nature, and all combinations, thereof.

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  1. Po-Mac's Burgers & Tall Plants. Old high school yearbooks are a wealth of historical information - 1964:
  2. My sister worked at the Sakowitz, a center piece of the open shopping acreage lay-out, in 1968-70. That store had a fabulous central entrance, with a large mosaic fountain as a focal point. https://blog.chron.com/bayoucityhistory/2009/12/ever-shopped-at-sakowitz/ We bought our first puppy, in 1970, at a pet store which was located in the open air shops, just northeast of the former Joske's site. My school friend's parents owned the Mini-Max grocery on West Belt. I have a lot of fond memories from that shopping center, especially when it was in its first incarnation, though I shopped there when they added the 3 story enclosed mall in the 1980's, as well. You knew it was sadly going down hill, in the later 1980's when all they could offer, on the open space that once held the little shops, was a wet t-shirt contest. I was glad it revitalized into another multi-use shopping center as time went on.
  3. I have an original, promotional Houston Aeros hockey puck from the 1970's
  4. Very nice info! I did double check historicaerials.com and the post office was, indeed, a new build (I believe in time for the 1976 Bicentennial - I also believe that building has its same red and blue paint job from 1976, much deteriorated), just to the east of the ice rink/antique mall building. The area where the old ice rink building was became redeveloped into the glitzy Town & Country Mall of the 1980's. I looks like a parking garage took over most of the space. You can see it all on historicaerials.com
  5. historicaerials.com first shows the apartments, on Wirt, south of Hempstead Hwy., in their 1973 aerial.
  6. I was waiting for this thread to mention the west side stores. That was Sage. The Globe in the Memorial area was in the SW corner of Gessner and I-10, just west of Memorial City Mall (where the new hospital/hotel has just been built). It can be seen in historicaerials.com, starting from 1973 on up to 2004. It must have been used as a different store after it quit being Globe in the 1970's, but I can't remember what store took over. Sage was in the SW corner of Beltway 8 and I-10. I remember that Sage on West Belt was the only store that could sell clothes on Sunday when I was trying to buy some new clothing for school that was starting on Monday! Sage was nicer than Globe. Globe was like a K-Mart. Sage can be seen in historicaerials.com from 1973 until 2002. The land was then taken over by the highway department for use in the construction of Beltway 8 - I-10 interchange. The site is now a water retention pit.
  7. I remember that there was also an antique/flea market mall, with vendors having stalls within, on the south side of this building. We would stroll around, looking at all the stuff for sale. The site where the building stood is now where townhomes have been built, to the west of the post office.
  8. Well, I am certainly glad to have come across this thread while searching for something totally different! I have been fascinated by this house since about 1989, as I drove past the back side of it on I-10. The wonderful brick architecture, in an area that typically held wooden frame homes, was very intriguing. About 10 years ago, I was determined to find the front of this house and did some road navigation to find it way back off of Houston Street. Back then, the area had already declined to a sad state. Now, with the developments over the last 5 years, I can see why this property has become lucrative, and I hope it is restored. Thanks for the wonderful research.
  9. That is correct. As I said before, the original shopping center was built for cars. This has been a helpful web site to see old configurations: http://www.historicaerials.com/ Type in "Town & Country" for the Landmark. Zoom out. Hit the 1973 tab to see the original mall layout that I referred to. You can see Sakowitz and the road configuration at the time. Also visible, is the long building on the east side, east of Joske's that was the antique mall/ice skating rink.
  10. OK, well I see others answered your questions, and I fixed the dud link.
  11. Ah, this was another one of my shopping resources, starting in about 1969, when the "mall" was actually Town & Country Village, an assemblage of mostly higher end stores, grouped as building clusters and opening to the outdoors. This village promoted store to store transport by car, making it cumbersome for shoppers to hop from store cluster to store cluster, getting into and out of their cars repeatedly. Then, there was the Houston weather that people don't like to be out in. The original main department stores were Sakowitz and Joske's, with Sakowitz located on the south side, about where Randall's Supermarket is now, and Joske's at the north side of the village. Stores in the village were designed with a Spanish style appearance, with many archways and using red terra cotta tiles for roofing. "Spanish" was a popular building style in the mid to late 1960's. Sakowitz had a spectacular fountain in the center of its store, with small green hued mosaic tiles and some sort of metal sculpture emanating from it to spray the water. It was a one story building. Wish I had thought to take a picture, but I was a little kid at the time. Anyway, as I remember, we didn't shop much at the Village, except for the two department stores, on occasion, and some of the little shops that formed the "village". To the north of Joske's was a group of little one story shops, facing outdoor courtyards and connected by covered, porch-like sidewalks along their perimeters. It gave the area a very cozy feeling and the shops were detailed on the exterior with an abundance of wood, and a human scale that was quite intimate. Here were shops such as the pet store, from which we bought our first dog, a candle shop, card shop, a high end men's clothing shop, and a larger clothing shop on the east side of Joske's, that catered to the teenage girl of the mid to late 1970's. Restaurants did dot the T&C acreage in free-standing, isolated locations, none connected to the shops. The Pappas BBQ restaurant was one (on the west side of the complex), and there was a large Mexican restaurant later on, just north of Sakowitz. Joske's had a small cafe located on their second floor ( the south side, I believe). As with Memorial City's original Foley's, this was a left over trend from previous decades, before the advent of the food court. Bigger draws to the village in the 1970's were the multiplex movie theaters, Town & Country 6 and Loews 3, both located on the west side of the village, along West Belt (Beltway 8). They were always busy with moviegoers. On the east side of the northern end, (in the vicinity of the present post office) were located an antique mall and ice skating rink. These were in a vast, stand-alone, rectangular building... metal clad, I believe. By the late 1970's/1980, the village was languishing and I remember they had gone so low as to host a wet t-shirt contest on their north side greenspace! Afterwards, the T&C owners decided to concede to Houston's heat and humidity and open up a 3 story enclosed shopping "mall" in an L-shape, in 1983. This was built to the north of Joske's, in the area that once held the courtyard stores. Again, upscale stores were the anchors, including the existing Joske's, Neiman-Marcus and Marshall Fields. Also included, was a MacDonald's and a food court type eatery location, along with glass elevators in the two axes of the L and escalators located at the corner of the L. The 3 stories were, from the beginning, overly anticipated. The third story was never fully occupied and it was rather quickly losing stores. In addition to the extant parking garage which was built just south of Luby's at that time, another parking garage was built on the west side, between the 3 story mall and the movie theaters. This last one has since been demolished. Here is a good link to further commentary about the mall, which you may have seen: http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/town_and_country_mall_tx.html I believe that T&C is much better off today than it ever was in the past. The inclusion of multi-use: multi-family housing and office space within the acreage is a good move to vitalize this area. It has most everything you could want.... major retail, restaurants, post office, supermarket/pharmacy, close proximity to 2 highways. You could walk or bike from your new townhouse to any variety of amenity. Are the theaters returning in its new plan?
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