Jump to content

57Tbird

Full Member
  • Posts

    599
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by 57Tbird

  1. Wow!! What a trip to the past... my past. I graduated from Lamar in 1953. I think I recognize some of the kids. I will have to check my yearbook and see if I can find them in the jr/soph sections. I still see and correspond with a lot of old Lamar classmates. I will send this video on and see if they know anyone in it.

    That was the Village theater box office. I went to both the Village and Alabama many times in my youth and on into my adult years.

    I remember the Yacht Restaurant. It was on the west side of S. Main. I don't remember if it was north or south of Gaido's, which was across S. Main from Playland Park (9200 S Main). It was most likely toward the south. I think it was gone by the late 50's.

    Thanks for the video. It brought back a lot of memories of the fashions and cars of that era.

  2. Hi T-Bird,

    Those are not Sprints. They are Midgets. I was told that the fellow all crossed up in the pic is A.J. Foyt. My best guess is that the man in the 9 car is Billy Griswold. You have to remember that the old fences changed a few times over the years. Anyway, great discussion. Maybe Mark can shed some light on this.

    jakdad,

    I don't think you are referring to the same post that I referred to.

    My reply to Mark's post was on July 31, 2006. Mark's post that I replied to and referenced in my post was dated July 29, 2006, 8:20 PM. I guess that post and accompanying pictures have been deleted by Mark, because I no longer see it. It had pictures of a race track and some sprint cars that Mark said was Playland Park in Houston. I investigated and found that it was a Playland Park in Coucil Bluffs, IA. Mark later responded and agreed. That post has been deleted also.

    I think you are talking about a post dated August 1, 2006, 2:45 AM, that

    shows a picture of AJ turned sideways at Playland. Of course, those are midgets.

  3. From my earliest remembrances, Christie’s on South Main had a sign on the Main Street side of the building claiming, “We Serve Pizza Pie”. I don’t know if Vallian’s preceded them or not.

    Christie's came way before Valian's, at least it seemed that way to me. When I was a kid in the mid-40's, my folks would take me to Christie's after church on Sunday. I always got a dozen jumbo fried shrimp for $.75. Valian's came into being sometime in the early to mid-50's, I believe. I used to go there often while at Rice in that time-frame. I remember eating my first pizza there. It came with the aforementioned anchovies, and this was my first endeavor with that delicacy. Needless to say, I was not impressed with this new dish, known as pizza. In my later years, I have come to like them on my pizza, as well as taking a like to many other foods I did not care for in my youth.

  4. And there is no doubt that the building at the far right side of the Life photo is Rice Univ. Lovett Hall.

    END OF STORY

    Compare the left side of this picture of Hermann with the part of the building shown in the Life photo. The Lovett Hall structure is not like that in the Life photo. Lovett would be further to the right and out of the Life picture.

    HermannHosp-1925.jpg

    • Like 1
  5. I believe the bldg. to the right in the photo (beautiful Life mag. shot) is the original Hermann Hospital Bldg, not a Rice Campus Bldg. Notice, it's a very wooded area.

    On second thought, I may be wrong, I do recall an original Rice Campus - Spanish style bldg. that sits in that general area. Is it Lovett Hall?

    It's one or the other.

    One 1920 map I just referenced shows a train trolley track paralleling S. Main, turns at Bellaire, southern border of Rice Campus.

    If you refer to the larger view of the topo. map provided by Sevfiv (post #2), you can see the S. Main track changing course slightly between the two circle figures at the Hermann Park entrance. I think this is the train track seen in the bottom of the Life picture. I veers a little crossing the roads, and straightens out again.

    I think you are correct about the building in the photo being the original Hermann Hospital. At first, I thought it was Lovett Hall, but, looking closer, the architecture doesn't match.

    Bellaire was not the southern border of the Rice campus. The southern border was where University Blvd is now located.

    In this 1921 photo, you can see in the upper right corner what was referred to as the "Toonerville Trolley", a one-car shuttle that connected with the streetcar line at Eagle Street. The large white structure in the center is the Autry House across Main St. from the Rice campus.

    Trolley-1921.jpg

    • Like 1
  6. Here's a few photos showing Mading's Drugs (one 'D' not two) and Meyers Brothers, as well as a few arials. All of these are from 1957, the year it opened.

    post-2167-1250298330171_thumb.jpg

    That car on the far left, in picture #2, sure looks like a '62 Chevy. TJones... help!

    • Like 1
  7. Hiya, folks...I know I'm coming into this thread really late, but does anyone know where the ice rink used to be? All I could find out was that it was on Hutchins Street but no street number. And I presume the building is no longer there? When did it close down? Thanks...

    Don't have an address, but it was at Hutchins and McGowen.

  8. There was also another very popular on complete opposite called "The End of Main Dance Hall or Club" named because well, it was at where Main st ended perhaps past now Med Center area is.

    The End o' Main was near the northwest corner of where 610 crosses Main. I think Sonny Look's was eventually at the same location.

    • Like 1
  9. OK, I did a little more checking, and '53 is about right. It's between the two big building booms -- the postwar one that gave us Anderson Hall, Abercrombie Lab, the Nuclear Lab, and Wiess Hall (not originally built as a college as I had originally thought); and the late 50's one which gave us the Pierce-Pierce Science twins, Hamman Hall, the RMC, and the WMCA college additions to the old residence halls.

    I thought the immediate postwar stuff was later than it actually was.

    EDIT: A nuclear research lab built in '49? That was pretty darn cutting edge, I would think.

    Now I want to know more about that "house" next to the Physics Building that LunaticFringe noticed. Fox's book, while having a very detailed treatment of the Physics Building, does not mention it.

    I didn't remember that building, so I contacted an old classmate of mine from the mid-50's, who was a physics major, and asked him. His reply...

    "I'm not sure. There was a small Van de Graaff accelerator in that

    vicinity that was used by Prof. Jack Risser and a few students when I

    was a grad student, but I think that it was located in the long building

    to the right of your mystery building. Somewhat later, Prof. Charlie

    Squire got a cryogenic system on a truck-trailer

    from the Air Force for condensing liquid nitrogen or oxygen from air

    (while burning lots of diesel fuel and making lots of noise), and it was

    put in about that location you show, but that was later, about 1958. At

    a guess, the building might have been a shack housing the predecessor

    system for producing cryogenic liquids.

    Another possibility: you will also recall the the Physics Building

    used to also house the Biology Department, and that they moved out to

    thir own building in about 1957. The mystery building could have been

    theirs, perhaps for housing small animals without having the smell

    permeate the main building."

  10. Thanks for the pics, TBird! That second one is the best 50s aerial of Rice I have ever seen, and its pretty easy to see how it might have been a tempting cut-through from Rice Blvd to Main. Could that be a little later than '53? The Science triplets and the Memorial Center are not built, nor the College additions, but Wiess College and the Bonner Lab are.

    Possibly. I'm sure that's the date that was on my source. I believe that photo came from one of my old Rice publications. I'll check and get back, if I can find it.

  11. I have an aerial shot of the Med Center-Rice U. area taken in 1958 that I have cropped to show the old fire station area. I must have traveled by that place hundreds of times on my way to work in that time-frame, and I don't recall it. I know that Braeswood stopped at Main, so it does not appear in the photo. I think that part of Fannin was called Old Main or Knight Road back then.

    MedicalCenterFS33.jpg

  12. Would anybody by chance have any information about a Sunset Theater on McGowen? This would have been from sometime in the 40's. A picture would be great.

    I am not refering to the Sunset drive in, which seems to be the only result I can get for "Sunset theater".

    Thanks,

    Rhino

    I went there many Saturdays, as a youngster in the early 40's, to see cowboy movies. Did take a date there in the early 50's. It was at McGowen and Chenevert. Built around 1940, if I remember correctly, by Albert Farb, father of Houston apartment developer, Harold Farb.

  13. I recall it snowing 2 or 3 years earlier as well. It was about 4 inches but melted quickly. And somewhere I have some real neat pix of the show in 1949, That was a pretty big one.

    Here's a picture of my house in the snow of 1949. The picture had 1947 written on the back, but I guess that was wrong because I can't find a record of any significant snowfall for that year in Houston.

    House-1949.jpg

  14. I remember going to a baseball game the first year it opened, it was a thrill, nothing like it in its day......but here's a bit of trivia few people will remember, I believe it was 1966 and I watched SCCA (Sports Car Club of America) sports car road racing on the roads/parking lots surrounding the Astrodome. It was done only once.

    I had forgotten about that. I was there. After being a frequent visitor to the races at Playland and Meyer, I remember how tame it was and how careful the drivers were in avoiding any collisions in their sports cars.

    • Like 1
  15. I went to the first four opening games in 1965. What a sight when I first walked in. It actually seemed, at the time, like the "Eighth Wonder of the World". Saw Muhammed Ali clobber Cleveland Williams in a media-hyped, championship bout that turned out to be a laugher. Saw UH play Ole Miss. when Archie Manning was the Miss. QB. Don't remember who won. Also went to the bullfights. At the time, I thought the Astrodome would last forever. Appears that I might outlive it.

×
×
  • Create New...