mkultra25

Wow... It's come to this? We know what theatre were refering to.

Wasn't intending to suggest anyone didn't know which theater was being discussed, just posted the link for anyone who may not have been aware of the Pasadena Capitan's more famous Hollywood namesake. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

I agree, but a lot of people here are saying "THE EL Capitan". Which is repetitive, needless and unnecessarily redundant.

Just the same, the theater's name on its signage and in common usage was "Capitan". Not "El Capitan".

Plus, they're two different theaters. The El Capitan is in Hollywood and is owned by Disney:

El Capitan

I think Ducho's has been closed for over 10 years now. It was about 10 years ago that I went out to the meat market (B&W?) out that way, and I noticed they were no longer there.

Ducho's has only been closed since February 2003 - the last year or so they were open, the expense of running the restaurant was apparently getting out of hand compared to the business they were doing, so Mr. Ducho decided to retire. The building was sold to some folks that converted it into a church.

Ducho's used to front right onto N. Shepherd, at Heidrich St., but at some point in the past they relocated to the building behind the one that currently faces Shepherd. This is why their large neon sign was right at Shepherd and Heidrich - it used to be in the parking lot of the original location. You may have been remembering the original location when you thought they were gone, but I thought the move happened longer than 10 years ago.

I really miss Ducho's - I used to go there with my parents when I was a kid, and many years later I rediscovered it after a very long absence. For the next couple of years until it closed, my wife and I ate there semi-regularly, and even reintroduced my parents to it as well. Can't begrudge Mr. Ducho's decision to close, though; he had a great run for 38 years, and I have to admit that in the restaurant's twilight days I rarely saw anything like the crowds I remember packed in there in the late 60s/early 70s - more often it would be just us and maybe a couple of other tables of diners.

Interesting trivia: "Ducho" is pronounced "DOO-ho", with a silent "c". Wonder how many people have pronounced it "DOO-cho" or "DUTCH-oh" over the years?

couldn't they just up the ticket prices and/or revamp the schedule and movies. provide better parking... I LIKE the idea that it is a theater, I think this many of us are in an uproar more about loosing the theater versus the building itself. just putting another restaurant or retail space in there will still result in us loosing a theater and a destination.

Theaters make almost all of their money from concessions. Typically, the percentage of the box office that they get to keep vs. what's handed over to the studio is calculated on a sliding scale that's heavily weighted toward the studio in the first week of release. For example, in that first week the studio may get 90% of the box office take, and the theater 10%, then in the second week the ratio is adjusted to 80/20, and so on. In the modern era where everything is focused on a big opening weekend rather than a slow, word-of-mouth buildup over several months, this system is artificially skewed toward the studios at the expense of the theaters. It's one of the key reasons the exhibition industry is in trouble (almost every major chain has entered bankruptcy over the past ten years).

This is how it works for big Hollywood films and the large theater chains, at any rate - there may be some variance when it comes to indy films and Landmark, but the bottom line is that theaters are typically operating on very thin margins to begin with. My guess is it would not take very much of a rent hike on Weingarten's part to render the RO economically unfeasible. And I agree with the previously-posted sentiments that they'll just gaze skyward and intone the mantra of the hardcore free-marketeers, that the theater's demise is regrettable but it was simply the will of "the market". And another irreplaceable local institution will vanish, thanks to a hard blow from Adam Smith's invisible hand.

Furrs Cafeteria, Wyatts Cafeteria, Picadilly Cafeteria, Allbritton Cafeteria.

Guess the cafeteria market kind of died out, huh? Even Luby's has closed many of their locations.

Piccadilly isn't completely defunct, although they have closed some locations - the Northwest Mall location is closed, but the one at Northline is still open and seems to do quite a bit of business.

There used to be a Furr's in Deauville Plaza (I-45 and Dyna), but I'm not sure if they're still open.

I still can't get over the closure of Luby's #1 on Buffalo Speedway - given their location, I can't believe they weren't doing well. It used to be a regular stop for us when we lived a few blocks away from it. Some things are better and some are worse since Pappas acquired Luby's, but on the whole I think I preferred the old Luby's.

As for W.W. Thorne... is the guy still alive? The Harris County Appraisal District still lists him as the owner of his house, but I figure the guy's gotta be close to 90.

Very much alive, healthy and active. He's in his early 80s and still lives in Hidden Valley. My dad talks to him fairly regularly as they've both served for years in the neighborhood civic club.

Aldine/Airline Area Primer

Start dates for various places within the photo... or, make that WILL BE in the photo (feel free to add or correct)

Supermarkets

Lucky 7 - 1956?

Kroger #85 - 1966 (remodeled and renamed #159 in 1974)

Piggly Wiggly/Rice/Price Fighter - 1969

Safeway (I-45 & W Gulf Bank) - 1972

Safeway/Fiesta (Airline & West) - 1973

Randalls - 1975

Whoops, I need to read for content more carefully - I glossed over your mention of the Kroger when I posted my earlier question about Piggly Wiggly being the first supermarket in the area. Now that you mention it, I do recall the Kroger and the Piggly Wiggly coexisting at the same time, but my memory's obviously a bit fuzzy as I was only two years old when the Kroger was built.

Where was the Lucky 7? The only one in the area I can think of was on Airline at Carby Rd - it's now the Airline Grocery, and you can barely make out what remains of the old Lucky 7 sign. My aunt used to live right down the street from there, on Carby Rd - she owned a nice-sized chunk of land there, some of which she eventually sold to the people who started the trailer park that's still there.

Yes, that is Hidden Valley Drive dead-ending into 75 and Sunnywood is the north/south street paralleling it. That's Hidden Valley Section 1 and construction started in 1958.

My parents live in the section yet to be constructed in the photo, west of Sunnywood and north of Hidden Valley Drive.

I was doing research through old newspapers last night at U.H. and came across ads for McMahon Chevrolet, which opened in January 1971 at Hidden Valley and I-45. You might be interested in knowing that the Texaco station at that same corner and the Shell at West Mount Houston and I-45 (both incorporating Hidden Valley in their names) were built in 1963 along with the freeway. The now-closed Kroger was built in 1966 and remodeled in 1974. The Hidden Valley Shopping Center apparently was built in 1969 and consisted of a Madsen-Dugan Pharmacy, a Piggly Wiggly grocery store, a TG&Y and later a Weiners.

I remember that Texaco station well. Mr. Futrell, the owner, lived a few houses down the street from us when I was growing up. Also spent a lot of time in the stores in the Hidden Valley Shopping Center as a kid. The Dugan's Drugs had a great lunch counter with a grill and soda fountain. Wasn't Piggly Wiggly the first supermarket to be built in that area? The closest one I can remember before that was an A&P in Northtown Plaza at 45 and Tidwell.

I've got lots more if you're interested, including info on roads stores, etc., and I'd love to hear anything you've got on the area. As I've said, I'm doing a history on the area. Actually it's a history of the Aldine Mustangs football team and I'm incorporating facts about how the area has grown and changed to add some flavor to it.

It's pretty rare to run across anyone who even knows where Hidden Valley is, let alone anything about the history of the area. If you're doing a history of the Mustangs, have you talked to W. W. Thorne himself? He'd probably be interested in something like this, and was certainly "present at the creation", as it were, of a lot of the things under discussion in this thread.

I grew up right smack-dab in the middle of that picture!

Mark, I came across that photo of old U.S. 75 in Houston Freeways and it inspired me to write a history of the area, which I'm working on right now as I post this. I stop in here occasionally to see if anyone has posted anything to help in my research. Was I happy to see this post!

To the left of the future I-45 you can see the beginnings of Hidden Valley. I grew up just to the right of the future I-45 in northline Terrace, which in the 1959 photo is an open field.

Toward the top of the photo you can see the new Aldine High School, which was built at Airline and West Road in 1956 after the original school (on Aldine Westfield and Aldine Bender) burned down on Thanksgiving Eve 1954.

Towards the bottom middle of the photo along what was then North Shepherd Drive (U.S. 75) there are three gasoline storage tanks, which is Exxon's (then Humble's) North Houston Products Terminal. I am trying to find out when these were built. If anyone knows, by all means, let me know.

I'd love to start a thread about the history of the area in the photo, but so far, it seems the board is mostly made up of people who grew up in Sharpstown or along South Main. As best as I can determine, I'm the only person on here who grew up in this area.

Anyone out there who wants to talk about the Aldine/Airline area?

That is an amazing photo - I grew up right in the middle of it as well, in Hidden Valley, and my parents still live there. I assume that's Hidden Valley Drive along the north boundary of that first group of houses built in the neighborhood (dead-ending into US 75 as it heads east), and Sunnywood heading north from there parallel to 75 before crossing what would be SH 249.

When I tell people that are more recent arrivals to that area that it used to be practically out in the country, they find it hard to believe given the massive development that's taken place since then. Unfortunately, flood control improvements haven't kept pace with development, which is why you can count on seeing a shot of the intersection of 249 and 45 under several feet of water on the evening news every time there's significant rainfall in the area.

Yep, speaking of token gestures. I thought that sign was not original to the Village Theater, but I'll check it out.

It's not. It's a replica that was built to look like the original marquee. I couldn't find a picture of it online anywhere, but if you compare it with a picture of the original marquee, it's fairly obvious that the proportions and some of the details are different. I believe that there was originally some talk of using of the original marquee when the Village Arcade was being planned, but for whatever reason (previously undetected structural problems due to its age?), it never happened.

I emailed the following:

ir@weingarten.com

[...]

I emailed Brook at Weingarten and it bounced back. Hope she did not get fired on Friday.

FWIW, Weingarten's website lists Brook's email address as bwootton@weingarten.com - my guess is that ir@weingarten.com was a generic investor relations address that may be out of date if it's bouncing.