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FilioScotia

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Posts posted by FilioScotia

  1.  Tomek's was on Old Galveston somewhere south of where 610 now sits. 

    Tomek's Steak House was on the old La Porte Rd just outside the Pasadena city limits next door to the oil refinery.  I went to Pasadena High School in the 50s with the owners' son Marcus Tomek. 

  2. It's clearly an artist's rendering of what the Rice Endowment wanted, but I'm guessing that fell through when they learned how much it would cost. They had money for sure, but nowhere near that much money. Everything had to be scaled down to an affordable level. It still ended up looking pretty great. Rice has one of the more beautiful campuses in the country. 

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  3. ****Does anybody have the address of the original Pea Farm?****

    The old P-Farm, short for Prison Farm - not Pea Farm - was on the property now occupied by the HPD Southeast Sub-Station and Municipal Court at 8300 Mykawa. The city held on to the land when it closed down the P-Farm, but found a use for it some time later when HPD started opening sub-stations around town.

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  4. And Playland Park was an old carny style amusement park with no water related attractions, other than the tank with the small boat kiddie ride.

     

    My fellow HAIF'ers we have a mystery. We have an old newspaper ad promoting what appeared to be a semi-outdoor water-themed honky tonk with beer, setups and dancing, supposedly at 8301 Main. Unfortunately, that ad is ALL we have. Even with the address in the ad, nobody here had been able to find any evidence of where it was, or any credible evidence that it even existed.  

     

    I'm willing to theorize that somebody named Al Gomillion tried to start up a place like that but it failed, or never even opened. Notice the ad says the people in the photos were models. That tells me he didn't have any happy customers to pose for the ad. If it opened it didn't last long because it didn't leave any footprints. 

     

    The floor is open.......

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  5. The advertisement shown above says Lake Island was at 8301 Main, which would put it a block south of the Main-OST merge, and directly across Main from the Gateway Pool complex.

     

    The ad also says it was behind Prince's Restaurant, which doesn't make any sense. Look at the aerial photo. The only thing behind that Prince's was OST. I can't see any evidence of a water-themed recreation area for grownups anywhere on the east side of Main. 

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  6. I'm fascinated by the apparent fact that there were two competing water parks across South Main from each other in the late 40s and 50s, and there seems to be no trace of them now.

     

    The Gateway pool was in a grassy area  just north of the spot where the Target store is now, which would put in or right next to the 8300 block of  Main.

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  7. I'm willing to go out on a limb and say Lake Island didn't last very long, probably because it was aimed at adults, with dancing and beer, and it was outdoors. I'm speculating that a guy named Wes Oldfield bought it and turned it into the Gateway Swimming Pool and Skating Rink complex for grownups and kids.

     

    I say this because the Gateway Pool was at precisely the same location as the Lake Island complex. On Main one block south of OST. A Super Target store and parking lot now covers that location. Here's a link to more information about Gateway with a historic aerial shot of where it was:

     

    http://www.examiner.com/article/the-gateway-swimming-pool-on-south-main

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  8. In a few weeks there will be no sign that the highly over-rated and overly lamented Westbury Square ever existed. Good riddance. The Houston Business Journal says townhouses are going up.

     

    http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/blog/breaking-ground/2015/07/westbury-square-to-be-demolished-in-30-days.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+bizj_houston+%28Houston+Business+Journal%29

  9. I went back to the war years on Google Earth's historic views and those markings were there in 1943, when almost nothing else was anywhere in sight. It makes me think these markings might not have been for an airfield. Why would anybody put an airfield so far outside of town in those days when ground transportation was difficult at best. What ELSE could it have been?

     

    I think you're right about that road shooting off to the southwest being the old Main Street Loop. Notice where it ends. On the historic aerials it ends abruptly where it meets what is now South Fannin, just south of the Loop 610. And another point of reference, the Main Street Loop ran straight through the property now occupied by the Astrodome and NRG Stadium. 

     

     

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  10. You may be thinking of another small airfield a few miles east of Sky Ranch. It was Skyport Airfield. It was in an area between what was then South Park Blvd (now MLK) and Mykawa Rd. By the early 50s Skyport was long gone, and the land was completely covered by a large residential neighborhood with streets named after famous military people and battles. The developer put those military names on all the streets to attract WWII veterans and their GI Bill home buying ability.

     

    Skyport_TX_50sect.jpg

     

    Skyport was nowhere near the site of the VA Hospital. The airfield in the area just south of OST and the VA was Sky Ranch Airfield.

     

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  11. It wasn't Sam Houston Airport. THAT airfield was much farther out to the southwest. It was in the area now known as Westbury, just northwest of what is now Chimney Rock and South Main. Sam Houston Airport was still depicted as an active airport on a 1955 Humble Oil street map of Houston.

     

    SamHouston_TX_55map.jpg

     

    It was closed and pretty much gone by 1960, but you can see where it was in this aerial photo taken in 1960. The photo is looking south. That's Hwy 59 running east to west with Meyer Speedway at the top.  The street along the eastern edge of the old airport is Chimney Rock.

     

    SamHouston_TX_60_s.jpg

                                                                                                     

     

    I think you are talking about the very old Sky Ranch Airport. It was in the area you describe near the present day VA Hospital. It is also written up on the website you provided. It didn't stay in business very long, but it is a historic old airfield. 

     

    SkyRanch_TX_50sect.jpg

     

    Following WW2, three Tuskegee Airmen, Ben Stevenson, Elton “Ray” Thomas and Hulon “Pappy” White relocated to Houston Texas to establish a flight training program, charter flying, cargo services as well as other services that would afford black G.I.’s & civilians the opportunity to learn about aviation, continuing the tradition of the Tuskegee Airmen.

     

    Located on Reed road, on the historic Taylor-Stevenson RanchThe Sky Ranch started operations in 1946.  Azalea White (wife of “Pappy” White) made her mark in history by becoming the first black female pilot licensed in the state of Texas in 1946. 

     

    Sky Ranch ceased operations in 1948, lasting a mere 2 years. It reportedly closed when legislation restricted the use of the G.I. Bill, causing a downturn in flight training business.

     

     

     

     

     

     

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  12. By the way, in case you're interested, that old article was in the national entertainment magazine Billboard, which covers ALL kinds of entertainment, including roller skating. The link I found was to the October 20, 1956 issue, page 57, and a string of short items about roller rinks around the country. Here's the link:

     

    https://books.google.com/books?id=fAoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA57&lpg=PA57&dq=old+skating+rink+on+holmes+road+houston&source=bl&ots=NHTF1qZcEE&sig=r5_hsgUQ3gIU2vBjnucwrlWHOdw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=SZGtVPj2FoigNqCegOAJ&sqi=2&ved=0CHcQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=old%20skating%20rink%20on%20holmes%20road%20houston&f=true

     

    To see what else was going on in the entertainment world in October of '56, scroll up to Page 1 and read to your heart's content. I promise - it will REALLY take you back to the 50s.. 

     

  13. I remember that rink. I met a lot of girls and had a lot of great fun there in the late 50s.

     

    I found an old newspaper article about this rink, dated October 20, 1956. It was the Gulfgate Roller Rink, and the article said it opened in August 1956 at what was then 6839 E. Holmes Road, adjacent to the then new Gulfgate Shopping Center. It was owned by Estes A. Kelly and his wife Connie, and they claimed it had the largest skating floor in the city at that time. The Kellys also owned Skateland at 6610 Capitol.

     

    Holmes Road is still there, but not with that name. It is now the S. Loop service road, running west from Gulfgate out to near Cullen, where it dog-legs a little to go under the S. Loop near Scott and becomes Holmes Road again. 

     

  14. ****My father told me they couldn't compete with Astroworld.****

     

    That might be true to some extent. It's worth noting however that Busch Gardens was built for adults, with a few attractions to entertain their kids. Astroworld was built for people of all ages, especially kids, with a few attractions for their parents.

     

    I still think it was the location. This may sound elitist, but it is a fact that Houston's east side is not a good part of town. The Port of Houston and Denver Harbor - "Podunk" - areas have had a bad reputation for crime and gang activity for many years. A lot of people from other areas may not have wanted to drive into an area where they didn't feel completely safe. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

     

    I don't remember the area around Astroworld ever having that problem.

  15. At one time, there were five Budweiser breweries with a Busch Gardens theme park on the property. Tampa, Houston, Williamsburg VA, and two parks in the Los Angeles area - Van Nuys and Pasadena. 

     

    All the parks were marketing successes, but the Houston Busch Gardens was open for only for two years - 1971-1973. I've never found out why they closed it, but I'm guessing it could have been because of the location on I-10 at Gellhorn. I remember it was a little hard to get into and out of. 

     

    The Busch Gardens story makes interesting reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busch_Gardens

     

  16. Are you sure?  It looks to me like the door on the far right is another entrance to the same business that uses the door on the left, the one marked 7659.  

     

    The distance between the two doors is only three parking spaces. If there were separate businesses behind each of those doors, they were pretty darn small.

     

    If that was the case, it would indicate that Big Humphrey's was take-out only at that location. No dining-in. Like Domino's. 

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