Jump to content

Historic Brazosport


marmer

Recommended Posts

I just found this thread. It is very fascinating to me as I grew up in Brazoria but practically lived in Lake Jackson during my formative years of the 70's and 80's. Unfortunately, I went to high school in West Columbia (poorest school in the county) although I lived closer to Brazoswood HS. I always resented that.

Did you know Dauri Reimer? She lived just outside of Brazoria but went to Brazoswood. She was a classmate of mine in the 1980 graduating class and she then went to A&M.

I loved the root bear stand in Freeport. I used to go to Quintana beach all the time. It was nicer than Bryan beach but not as expensive as Surfside.

I remember it well, both on Second Street and then in the park, but I never went there. I didn't really like root beer and neither did my parents, so we never had any reason to go. I did like Bryan Beach because you could drive on it and there were no glass container restrictions (good beer didn't come in cans back then.) Also it wasn't usually very crowded.

I saw many a movie at the old Lake I and II theaters in Lake Jackson. Does anyone remember the old drive in between Angleton and Freeport on the old 288? I saw 9 to 5 there back in the day.

Brazos Twin. Sure. I went a few times. I believe either Hurricane Allen or Alicia put the screens down for good in the early 80s.

My dad worked for Dow for 30 years before retiring. He stills lives down in Brazoria. Ever time I visit it seems nothing ever changes. I love living in Houston but my roots are in the love it or hate it little area known as Brazosport.

Mine, too, though he died in 1995. My mother still lives there in our old house on Acacia Street. But I can't say nothing ever changes. Of note:

The relentless suburbanization and chain-store frenzy of the area around Brazos Mall on 332.

The sale and residential development of the Dow Park at the lake.

The advancing deterioration of most of the original housing stock in Lake Jackson. (Most of the older neighborhoods are somewhat seedy now)

The major restructuring of 288 through Angleton.

New highways and bridges between Freeport, Jones Creek, and Quintana.

Surfside Beach Park, Quintana Beach Park, and the LNG terminal at Quintana.

Thanks for re-opening the thread!

marmer

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hurricane Carla in Brazosport:

2dkzndz.jpg

The article says water got up to the first floor of the administration building. As I recall the ground level is mostly parking. Plant B and Lake Jackson were flooded because the storm surge came so far inland it came around the end of the levees erected to protect Plant B (the one along Hwy 288 for those not familiar with Brazosport). Lake Jackson is approximately 10 miles from the coast.

2cf8g28.jpg

The Ammonia plant is right across 288 from the Administration building.

4g8ncd0.jpg

Whew!

A picture from the Facts special edition:

2jcgegz.jpg

The Surf Drive-in in the lower left, I guess that's Plant B in the background -- I think this was before Dow Badische (now BASF) was built. The drive-in across from the Surf was Boddiddlies or something like that; never went there. The interchange of 288 and 332 would be just off to the right; I guess it wasn't built then. I guess we lived in Lake Jackson when the only way in was on Oyster Creek Drive, a shell road coming off of the old Angleton-Clute road, but I don't remember it. Later, you could go to the foot of Azalea, jag over to Plantation and go out thru Clute, either following Plantation all the way to 288 or take the 'short cut' out Commerce. I don't remember when 332 came through from Brazoria -- originally that was just an extension of Oyster Creek Drive and didn't branch off to go to Surfside.

I took a trip to Brazosport recently and came back very depressed. I took a lot of pictures but not as many as I wanted as I ran out of space on my card. I'll get around to posting some of them.

Some corrections: above I referred to the Cherry St. bridge in Freeport -- there probably never was one. I should have been saying Velasco St. bridge. I'll go back and correct the posts.

I think the Velasco theater was probably on Ave A, not B. Just about everything there has been razed.

Quintana was on the south side of the mouth of the Old Brazos, Surfside on the north. The original site of Velasco in the early 1800s however was right on the coast. It moved inland after storms.

I've never heard of North Center Way or South Center Way; we always called it Other Way. Thought I even had a pic of a street sign but can't find it. I guess Sanborn should have passed out free maps to all the residents.

P.S. Lee's in Fpt has been razed and is now in a small space on Broad in the same block; looks like only one counter inside. They must've lost a lot of merchandise. There's nothing yet in the old Showboat.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

The swing bridge on the Old River at Freeport

v5anhf.jpg

I happened to see a story about this on 13 last night and couldn't believe it when the reporter said the bridge is still used. Hard to believe it still rotates much less would support a train and I thought all the tracks south of the river had been taken up. So I looked it up in The Facts.

The land bridge at the west end of Freeport was built before I was born but we still used this occasionally and it always scared me. It was narrow and cars and trains shared it and there always seemed to be a switch engine sitting at the north end of the bridge and I swear the engineers would always toot their horn when a car got on the bridge, even if they weren't going anywhere. I'm sure there were crossing arms to prevent cars from entering the bridge if there was a train but I wasn't old enough to understand that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I graduated Brazoswod in 1979. When my family moved to the Brazosport area in 1969 a person still had to go to Freeport to get many items. In Clute the Old wooden Reck's store was still being used but they had just layed out the plans for the one now in use. Clute at one time had a theater but it was torn down years before I moved there. I was told that Freeport during it's boom had three four theaters. I went to the Velaso once but to the Lake all the time in Lake Jackson. The Brazos Mall was supposed to be in Clute on Dixie Drive.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...

Bumping this thread. I went to the Houston Arts and Media History Book Fair in the Heights today and saw a presentation by Harry Sargent on his new book on Lake Jackson, part of the Arcadia Press' Images of America series just released last month. I'll be up late tonight poring over the pictures and I'm looking forward to meeting with Harry soon in LJ to share some of my memorabilia with him.

Edited by brucesw
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My great Uncle owned the Root Beer stand near The Mystery.

Anybody remember the root beer stand?

WOW You're related to Mr. Antonelli??? I loved that man ... all of them. All the way back to the late 40s and my mom before me. I used to work at the Weingarten's across from Restwood when I was in the tenth or eleventh grade at BHS. So glad to find this spot. Are you still living there?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I started doing some genealogy a few years ago when I realized that I had nothing to do between 2 and 4 a.m. It made me realize how connected I still am to that area, even though I moved away after high school and have not been back since the 70s. I think nearly half of Restwood is made up of my relatives. I was born in the Dow Hospital. We lived in LJ, Freeport, Clute, Oyster Creek and Surfside at one time or another. My maternal grandfather was a brick mason and builder and built a lot of the beach houses in the 30s and 40s. My uncle owned one of the department stores in Freeport and was a Chamber member and all that. My mom and her siblings all graduated from Freeport High School (my junior high), which is the one that is used for storage now, I guess. My family moved to Freeport/Oyster Creek back a little after the turn of the century (20th) and before 1920. I have and have had aunts, uncles, cousins, great aunts and uncles, grandparents and great grandparents all there. Though you never get away, so I understand why they stayed...now. Didn't then. I couldn't wait to move to the 'city'. Now I miss it. At least my particular slanted memories of it. :o)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

OK. Now I can't shut up about it. This nostalgia can be a bit overwhelming sometimes when you find others with similar memories. I used to ride my bike to the LJ theater every Saturday afternoon. My Girl Scout hut was only a block away as well so I would sometimes drop by to see if one of the moms were there and needed any help. When I went to the theater it cost less than a quarter to get in and candy was a nickle. So was the Coke and pc. My dad used to give me thirty-five cents every Saturday morning and I would race out and get my bike and ride around until the box office opened. What was the woman's name who worked there? I know she was a friend of my parents and was very nice. I quite liked her. I sure remember that coke machine. I used to almost drop my popcorn and candy (Zero bar) trying to time digging the cup out of it's slot where it seemed to nearly always stick in time for the coke to hit it instead of the drain. I managed about half the time. I had to hurry so I wouldn't miss any of the serial before the movie. Of course, I'm talking about truly great movies like Forbidden Planet, The Blob and Space Children. I just may be a tad older than you. Ha!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I only just now read about Bodiddle's and The Surf drive-in. Just FYI, since your interested in area history. Bodiddle's was an interesting idea. About a third of it was like a little 7-11 before 7-11s, the middle was a bar that was open front and back. When I was about six, my mom sent me inside that part one time after my dad so he could pick up our order. They used to have a big jar of oysters on the counter and a sign that said, "Win $1 if you can swallow one whole." Then way down below in tiny print, it said, "The last guy couldn't, as you can see." It was supposed to be a grand joke. Most of the men were on more than their first beer and thought it really funny. The rest of the place had a jukebox and a fast food type place. There was no place to sit inside and you placed your order at the one window they had and they would announce your name when it was ready over a loud speaker. There was a huge hand-painted sign outside it that was the menu and included hamburgers for twenty cents and BBQ burgers for twenty-five. Most of the guys there worked at Dow like my dad. He was in accounting. But everyone stopped going for a long time once when we drove up and the sign said 'Hamburgers 25 cents and BBQ burgers 35 cents." That was the last time I was allowed to go for the BBQ burger.

Dow Badische has been around many years. it was there when I was growing up. Uhm, not that I'm old or anything. In fact, I was quite young all my life. I have to ask, what do you mean that one beach is less expensive?? There's a charge? And what happened to the bridge? I can't find out anything except it's gone.

It's too bad you never tried the Root Beer stand. Mr Antonelli made it himself. There was no root beer like it. The recipe had been handed down for generations, at least two that I know of. My mom and her sister used to walk over there after school and get some whenever they could. He made some ice cream at one time, too, all handmade. When I was about three he gave me some pistachio. I wasn't sure about eating green ice cream, but he could always hug me into anything. I was thrilled when he was still running the stand so I could take my own boys to see him when they were young. He still remembered me even after I was gone for ten years. He was really getting on up there at that time. Still made the root beer. Didn't want anyone else to touch it. My mom had a lot of affection for him and we used to visit pretty frequently. I remember being upset after meeting him the first time and hearing people calling him, "Old Man Antonelli". I thought it was just his name. So I called him that. I told him, "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Old Man Antonelli." (I thought I was Shirley Temple.) He was always gracious to everyone that I knew of and just laughed and laughed when I said it. Then he told me what it meant and I was no longer pleased, I was embarrassed to meet him. But of course, he talked me out of that, too.

Going in to LJ was always the same when I lived there from, well, we're not going there, remember? From 288 up past the roller rink and Restwood and then on into town. I'm not great with street names as I was traumatized as a young tike dealing with streets called This Way, That Way, Center Way (though no north or south), Winding Way, Which Way and Thatta Way (kidding.) But there were, I think, seven of those names like that in downtown LJ. I always thought that Lake Drug was downtown. It used to really intimidate me to go there by myself. It was so BIG. ha! I would get turned around and sometimes when I was with my mom I would lose her. I was very, very young at the time. I knew about every grown-up who worked 'downtown LJ' , though.. The barbers, the guys at Piggly Wiggly, the ladies shop that had the terrible word 'brassieres' painted in gold lettering on the bottom of one of their windows. I had no idea what that was exactly, but the place was full of all kinds of underwear and I hated going there.

We also lived on Acacia. Right down the street from one of my friends, Kathy Greenburg. Her dad, Jack, owned the photography studio. There was a great little bitty park on the corner there where I and Kathy and a couple of other friends could play softball. Or at least we could throw the ball and try to hit it before we got tired of that and went in to play dolls. (Kathy had this amazing collection of dolls plus international dolls covering the top of every wall of her room still in their boxes. Her mom wouldn't let her play with those. That always broke my heart. I was always determined to get Mrs. Greenburg to change her mind about that, but I never did.

Are there no places online where there are just miscellaneous photos of Freeport and all the other towns from the beginning of photos? Of people doing various things, just being people. Kids playing, the mosquito man spraying the DDT and all us kids riding our bikes right inside the big cloud of 'fog' right behind him? Or the long lines at the elementary school in Angleton getting the shots, then later the sugar cubes of, maybe, polio vaccine and parents sweating bullets until they found out if their kids got the shots or the water? (They just knew that getting the vaccine would give the kids polio. It was a little scary and a few kids had polio already.) The schools the way they were I was there: Freeport Junior High Indians and BHS? Or Main street in Clute with the Dairy Dream or King? Kids swinging on the grapevines at the Lake Park? Teens from the 40s going to Antonelli's? The old Avenue B when it was a long row of shotgun houses and Dow was moving families in with families who were already living with families? The ultra cool Woolworth's that gave goldfish away to all the kids when they opened? And the fire?Some shots of 'Skid Row' by the levee of the River, that little street that at the time didn't even have a real name to it? Lots of homeless men with brown wrappers all up and down the street? The old skating rink in the tent off of 288 or the newer one in Clute? Or that little library in Freeport where the older lady would let you stay all afternoon and read? The one that was so dark and cool and felt so good to bare feet after they had been hopping across the hot pavement all the way to town. Or Bubba Rape? Whatever happened to Bubba Rape? My aunt was once engaged to him. I have noticed that other towns have set up or someone there has set up a site like that and hoped there was one somewhere for Brazosport.

Thanks for the patience.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 years later...

The railroad bridge below was originally the only bridge that connected Freeport to Velasco.  It carried foot, car, and rail traffic.  A span bridge was added in the early 1950's on Velasco Blvd.  And, this bridge was reduced to rail and foot traffic.  Yes, it carried rail until only a few years ago, Circa 2008.  It was replaced by a used vertical lift rail bridge shipped from Houma, LA.  This is the only rail route to Port Freeport,   Later, about 1966, another span bridge was added on Pine Street, (now officially Industrial Blvd) to better serve the port. 

 

The other swing bridge, for cars, was located near Brazosport High School.  It had the distinction of being constructed over dry land in the mid 1920's before the Brazos River was diverted around Freeport.  That brdge has been removed and replaced by a span bridge south of Freeport. Hwy 36 was rerouted behind Freeport in the early 1980's.

 

 

 

 

The swing bridge on the Old River at Freeport

v5anhf.jpg

I happened to see a story about this on 13 last night and couldn't believe it when the reporter said the bridge is still used. Hard to believe it still rotates much less would support a train and I thought all the tracks south of the river had been taken up. So I looked it up in The Facts.

The land bridge at the west end of Freeport was built before I was born but we still used this occasionally and it always scared me. It was narrow and cars and trains shared it and there always seemed to be a switch engine sitting at the north end of the bridge and I swear the engineers would always toot their horn when a car got on the bridge, even if they weren't going anywhere. I'm sure there were crossing arms to prevent cars from entering the bridge if there was a train but I wasn't old enough to understand that.

 

Edited by Wharf_Rat
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Bumping this thread again.  I found this site today while surfing around.  Some great old pics including Antonelli's in it's original location on 2nd street, the JC Penney's, Bodiddles, the Surf Drive-In, the entrance to the AP Beutel Building at Dow and more, all mentioned up-thread, and some images lifted from this thread.

 

Also, I recently visited the relatively new Freeport Museum.  Many of the displays relied quite a lot on framed newspaper clippings, still, there were some great images of the aftermath of hurricanes, some nautical relics, etc.  Worth a visit if you're down that way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 9 years later...

Regarding the Ora Theater in Freeport...

64a78f06113a4.image.jpg?resize=666,500

https://thefacts.com/news/inspection-planned-friday-at-ora-theater-in-freeport/article_307060b7-1673-56ce-b1af-e15a2a373d91.html

"The Ora Theater, built in 1940 and officially opened in 1941, was recently brought to the attention of the Freeport Board of Adjustments as an unsafe, unsecured, vacant building.

“I got a call last week from the Main Street coordinator and the chairman of their board had heard a rumor that building was slated for demolition,” City Manager Tim Kelty said. “I checked with our building official and she said no, there’s been no permit for the demolition of that building, but the building looks like the roof is ready to collapse at any time and there was concern if it does collapse, it could tear down the building next door as well.”

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...