mollusk Posted October 19, 2014 Share Posted October 19, 2014 I'm thinking that the company to the left of the service station is some sort of well works or perhaps well service supplier. There is a lot of drill pipe, along with various mechanical looking things. I don't have the expertise to give a guess whether it's oil, water, or something else. Sure would be nice if it had a legible sign out front. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmer Posted October 19, 2014 Share Posted October 19, 2014 Yes, and the trucks look like pipe service trucks, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle C Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Someone mentioned that the service station sign could be Humble except that they were white with red letters. Some were in fact red with white letters and I believe that service station sign could very well be a Humble station. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JLWM8609 Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Could it be Jensen Dr back when it was still US59? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronTiger Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 I like that idea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purpledevil Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Could it be Jensen Dr back when it was still US59?^this. First thing that popped into my mind was Old Humble Road after some study of the pic, but then the east-west configuration was mentioned, which of course takes OHR/Jensen out of the running. I believe we can rule out Hwy. 529, it was two lanes as recently as 30 years ago. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subdude Posted October 21, 2014 Share Posted October 21, 2014 Since the shadows are parallel to the road I can't see how the alignment would be north-south like Jensen. Another indication is that the secondary street in back runs parallel. Looking at Historic Aerials over the weekend, I noticed that even when a main road ran at an angle (eg Richmond Road), secondary streets were overwhelmingly built on the grid. I was also thinking Reed Road but couldn't match the structures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
9075 Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Someone mentioned that the service station sign could be Humble except that they were white with red letters. Some were in fact red with white letters and I believe that service station sign could very well be a Humble station. The shadow indicates that the service station sign is a circle, not an ellipse. It could be a Gulf station or a Texaco Station, as these companies used circular signage during this era. Another thing I noticed - the secondary road in the background is not exactly parallel with the main road in the foreground; it looks like they get closer together as one approaches the left of the photo. It also appears that there is an intersecting road at the left side of the photo. This is a fun puzzle. I spent quite a bit of time today on Google Earth looking for this condition in the 1944 and 1953 images, but can't seem to find a location that meets all of the critera... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
august948 Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 This is a long-shot, but since it's an aerial photo, can it be linked to other aerial photos in the collection and, with a little knowledge of airports of that era, maybe a possible flight path be determined? Could be that the shot is actually someplace on the edges of the Houston MSA given how fast and far an airplane can fly in a short time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michelle C Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 The shadow indicates that the service station sign is a circle, not an ellipse. It could be a Gulf station or a Texaco Station, as these companies used circular signage during this era. Another thing I noticed - the secondary road in the background is not exactly parallel with the main road in the foreground; it looks like they get closer together as one approaches the left of the photo. It also appears that there is an intersecting road at the left side of the photo. This is a fun puzzle. I spent quite a bit of time today on Google Earth looking for this condition in the 1944 and 1953 images, but can't seem to find a location that meets all of the critera... If you look very close at the sign and not the shadow, you can see it is a long word that is written on it. Also you can see it is oval and not round. Even looking at the shadow you can see it is oval. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucesw Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 Someone mentioned that the service station sign could be Humble except that they were white with red letters. Some were in fact red with white letters and I believe that service station sign could very well be a Humble station. Yes, I posted a link to a color photo of one of those Humble signs with red background above. I had also mentioned that Humble stations sold Atlas tires and your photo shows that, which makes me wonder even more why there appears to be a Goodyear sign, as someone else suggested. I'm satisfied it's a Humble station but unfortunately that doesn't help at all to locate it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucesw Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 This is a long-shot, but since it's an aerial photo, can it be linked to other aerial photos in the collection and, with a little knowledge of airports of that era, maybe a possible flight path be determined? Could be that the shot is actually someplace on the edges of the Houston MSA given how fast and far an airplane can fly in a short time. I mentioned above that I scrolled through the collection at HPL; as far as I saw, this shot of this site stood alone. A few pictures have dates on them but many do not. I have no idea what airport he was using. One thing I forgot to mention before, besides the shots of downtown, Rice and West U and all the industrial aerial shots, there were several pictures of the San Jacinto Monument and the surrounding area and some long shots showed the monument in the background. Overwhelmingly, when this guy was taking shots of industrial installations, he was in the ship channel area. It might be possible to examine some of those long shots and spot this site, if anybody else wants to take a shot at it. I think this was photo # 94 out of 117? but I'm not sure they're in any sort of chronological order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
august948 Posted October 22, 2014 Share Posted October 22, 2014 I mentioned above that I scrolled through the collection at HPL; as far as I saw, this shot of this site stood alone. A few pictures have dates on them but many do not. I have no idea what airport he was using. One thing I forgot to mention before, besides the shots of downtown, Rice and West U and all the industrial aerial shots, there were several pictures of the San Jacinto Monument and the surrounding area and some long shots showed the monument in the background. Overwhelmingly, when this guy was taking shots of industrial installations, he was in the ship channel area. It might be possible to examine some of those long shots and spot this site, if anybody else wants to take a shot at it. I think this was photo # 94 out of 117? but I'm not sure they're in any sort of chronological order. I scrolled through the shots too and couldn't match it up either. Been a fun time-waster so far, though. With the talk of shadows here, maybe someone can make a connection based on the length of the shadows and their direction to determine time of day and approximate time of year and group the shots that way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OkieEric Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I tried and probably wasted time... I thought perhaps an archive news search of "Mary's Cafe" would help and the best I could find was a Mary's Cafe that existed in Bloomington, TX. The owner, Mary RItchey, retired in 1972 after being open for ~20 years. The article below also mentions it was "next to the service station" Article So right timeline and next to a service station, but it's perhaps a bit far from Houston and unfortunately I couldn't find any historic imagery. Plus 404 runs NW/SE so that wouldn't seem to fit with the whole shadow thing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mollusk Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I wouldn't get too locked into the idea that the road runs straight east and west. Remember, the apparent location of the sun changes through the year, so it could actually be coming from different points on an arc. Which is a long way of saying, perhaps some part of 146 might be in play? Galveston Road (Hwy 3) wouldn't be it, because of the adjacent tracks pretty much along its entire length. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucesw Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Well there are worse ways to waste time. I accessed the collection again through a different link and this time saw a number of photographs I'm sure I never saw before, specifically, color pictures of the San Jacinto Monument and Battleship Texas and many shots of aircraft and ground operations at Hobby, both commercial and private, at the end. Parenthetically I also spotted a couple of aerial shots of the old San Jacinto Inn which I had either missed or not snapped to before. Most importantly in this browse thru, I realized the OP photo came at the end of a series of shots identified as being along Market Street and 'our' main road looks a lot like the other shots of Market Street in those photos. So I took to Historic Aerials and thought I found something very promising where Normandy intersects Market, on the south side of the street. Unfortunately the watermark obscures the area and the Google Earth image is badly overexposed and undecipherable and besides that, Sheffield cuts through on a diagonal and would be visible behind Mary's and I realized from subsequent year images that the secondary road is actually a railroad. So right now I'm stumped but I think more looks along Market Street are warranted. Also, I only went as far east as where Market intersected Texas 73, which was the route I-10 East took over ca. 1961, and I think Market extends beyond that on the other side. Also, I think we need to consider that the labels and groupings were probably selected by the archivist and not Browning and the designation 'rural' may be misleading. That gas station appears to have 4 pumps; most very small town/wide spot in the road/rural gas stations in that era as best I remember would have only 2 pumps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronTiger Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I tried and probably wasted time... I thought perhaps an archive news search of "Mary's Cafe" would help and the best I could find was a Mary's Cafe that existed in Bloomington, TX. The owner, Mary RItchey, retired in 1972 after being open for ~20 years. The article below also mentions it was "next to the service station" Article So right timeline and next to a service station, but it's perhaps a bit far from Houston and unfortunately I couldn't find any historic imagery. Plus 404 runs NW/SE so that wouldn't seem to fit with the whole shadow thing I had my doubts that the photo was actually in Houston...it's possible that another photo just got jumbled in there. However, Bloomington seems dubious because of heavily reliance on the grid, and I didn't see any cross-streets or other development. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnu Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 I just went through all the photos in the industrial set and you see buildings from other photos in various images. I was able to piece together the photos 04,02,08, and 05.So anyway, I located the Market St. Drive-In theater and found it in historic aerials and it is indeed on Market St. (duh?!)But I zoomed in after figuring out it was Market St. and looked at the shadows. The shadows go North-South (winter, i guess) and thus the road where Mary's Cafe is on is a North-South thoroughfare. I located McCarty Road in one of the other photos (York Oilfield Supply) . I also located the Rural Industrial Facility (photo 07) at Wallisville Road just west of McCarty. I looked around in that general area but the images are really bad and between 1944 and the 50's that area seems to be changing FAST.I am going to throwout a guess that the road in front of Mary's Cafe is McCarty between Lyons and Market. And the secondary road is Pearl.On Google Earth 1944, There are some buildings and houses that seem to be in the approximate places they should be, but all the buildings are not there and the resolution is terrible. On all the images available on Google and Historic Aerials in the 50's that area had become super industrialized and hard to make out anything. EDIT: Actually I just looked at the Historic Aerials website again. Looking more closely at the 1953 image of McCarty near the (new) road called Amarillo. I think Amarillo was pushed through to the north of the gas station where there seems to be some sort of easement in the photo.The shapes of the roofs of the gas station and Mary's seems to match and the long industrial building too. I am confident now that this is where the picture was taken. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OkieEric Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 gnu nailed it! That's got to be correct if I'm looking at it correctly there is still a single story structure there where Mary's was Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnu Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Gas Station and Mary's Cafe just south of Amarillo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnu Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 You are right OkieEric. I think this building is actually the old Mary's! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OkieEric Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 HCAD shows built 1960 but that's notoriously inaccurate Historic aerials "might" show a gap there in 1957 but it could just be washed out so tough to tell. Either way that is the exact spot, no doubt Thank you for saving countless future hours of searching Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnu Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 HCAD shows built 1960 but that's notoriously inaccurate Historic aerials "might" show a gap there in 1957 but it could just be washed out so tough to tell. Either way that is the exact spot, no doubt Thank you for saving countless future hours of searching No problem. I am glad I found it too, I was also getting a little obsessed...Yeah. Hard to trust the HCAD build dates. from my old '66 directory....shucks, i need an early 50's city directory.... South to North...807 Anderson Hardware (Mary's?)805 Anderson Auto Shop (maybe combined with the service station?)803 Anderson Service Station (No mention of brand)800 Oilfield Supply Company773- 769 Various other oilfield related companies....745 Economy Courts Motel! (from the sign in the photo, I don't think it was called Economy then) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gnu Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 And then the corresponding Sanborn map...dated 1946-1950 Looks like the numbering is a little different than 1966 but 813 is a Restaurant. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmer Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Not to put too fine a point on it, but BOOM! Great job, gnu! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Subdude Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 And we have a winner! Good work! Thanks so much for finding it. I was getting obsessive about it also. The numbering does seem to have shifted a bit. My guess is that the only structure still standing besides what appears to be Mary's is the long metal building closest to the corner of Pearl and Amarillo. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IronTiger Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Another lesson to be learned: shadows don't determine if it's east/west or not unless you actually know where north is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brucesw Posted October 23, 2014 Share Posted October 23, 2014 Great sleuthing, gnu. Now somebody post another one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torimask Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 amazing work! I had no idea when I posted the link it would generate the kind of sleuthing reserved for crime dramas! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
torimask Posted October 24, 2014 Author Share Posted October 24, 2014 Great sleuthing, gnu. Now somebody post another one.http://digital.houstonlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/images/id/3366/rec/121 how about that one? too much? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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