Libbie

Does anyone remember the old Wheeler Pharmacy? It was at 4401 Dowling, southeast corner with Wheeler. My mother used to take me there in the early nineteen fifties, after nursery school, for a BLT sandwich at their lunch counter. 

For decades, post-nursery school, it sat there, unchanged. I never had any reason to venture back into it, till one day, maybe in 1997, I stopped in. It was exactly as I remembered it: the old-fashioned soda fountain/lunch counter taking up the north wall; shelves full of drugstore stuff such as you could still see until not so long ago at the Buffalo Pharmacy and at the Avalon Drug; a pleasant oldish woman at the ornate, ancient cash register; and a very old gentleman seated in a chair in the center, watching the passing scene.

I had my small daughters with me, and I bought them each a popsicle. As I paid, I remarked to the lady that I hadn't been inside since about 1954. She said that the drugstore had been new then; it had belonged to the elderly gentleman seated nearby, her uncle. I remarked on the picturesque  cash register (The link below is to a picture of a reasonable faccimile, if memory serves):

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0192/4284/products/m2800-1_1024x1024.jpg?v=1391026517 . She said

that it had stood them in good stead during a recent blackout. 

Not long after, it closed, changed hands, and went through several incarnations, including a stints as Global Pharmacy, Alternative Medicine and Pharmacy, and other businesses, each one resembling the old drugstore less and less.

I'm glad I went in that day in the late 1990s and ate popsicles with my little girls, seated on stools at the no-longer-operational lunch counter, and in memory I smelled the makings of a BLT sandwich and saw my mother out of the corner of my eye, on the stool next to my four-year-old self.

Doerner has owned that property since 1963, according to the County Clerk's site, so I doubt that's the place the OP remembers. In addition, the property was heavily treed in the 50'sThe SW corner of Timmons and Alabama looks more like a farm or garden in the historic aerials

When I used to ride my bike in the area nearly 50 years ago, that part of the block was indeed treed and not just looking like a farm or garden, but obviously WAS a small farm or large garden, complete with farmhouse and sunbonneted farm woman. My memory is that in 1966 or so, the farmhouse, field, and trees were not on the corner but were surrounded by modern buildings (one of them pretty tall, one of them maybe a U Tote'em or something else completely non-rural), yet the tiny slice of rural America remained there on West Alabama near Timmons as the rest of the area kept pace with march of modernity. I don't remember Doerner's, but its building was probably one of those right next to the little farm. 

Some years ago I mentioned this, but nobody remembered it. Maybe some new/old members will.

 

When I was at Lamar High School in the '60s, there was a Brigadoon-like little farm nearby on Alabama. It was, I think, just a bit west of Buffalo Speedway, on the south side of the street: a small farm with rustic farmhouse and cornfield, often being hoed by an elderly lady in a sunbonnet. There was/were skyscraper(s) on either on or both sides; next door, or almost so, was a convenience store.

 

There was, at the time, absolutely nothing rural about that part of W. Alabama except the amazingly incongruous little farm. Some big oak trees partly obscured it, but, of course, not entirely, or I wouldn't have seen it and wondered about it so intensely. (When I drive past where it must have been, I try unsuccessfully to pick out what may be its still-extant trees; and it could have been east of Buffalo, but not by much).

 

I went off to college in 1969 and had other things to wonder about. By the time I was really grown up and looked for it again, it was long gone. Does anybody remember that little hold-out farm and its bonnetted owner?

I think I found it! I drove past the the 3600 block of Alabama, just east of Timmons (3617, to be exact), and  I think that's it.

A high wall obscures everything except the tops of some trees and some plastic-covered unidentifiable things that could be old boxes or old furniture, and if you really crane your neck, you can see that the trees are in a big yard without much of anything else in it--as though, perhaps, after the demise of the little farm, the trees and yard had remained, no longer Brigadoon-like, no longer looking like much of anything, but still set back and hidden from view. 

According to a sign on the street, a contracting business called Doerner Industries has an office somewhere on the property.

It's no longer a rural anachronism, but it's still mysterious looking.

Doerner (dur'-nur) is one of the few remaining plastering contractors in the city. By plastering I mean traditional gypsum plaster installed over lath on the interior walls of buildings that was prevalent before gypsum drywall (Sheetrock is a popular brand name) became so widely used. I've had Doerner on projects in the past from historic restoration to new high-end commercial buildings. The do great work but, as with so many true crafts, it is not cheap.

 

I believe the plastic covered things are the materials of their trade (lime, gypsum, etc.) being protected from the elements.

Interesting!

It seems that the SW corner of Timmons is a plausible candidate; tilled fields behind the treed house-lot, and gone by '73... (historicaerials.com link)

I think I found it! I drove past the the 3600 block of Alabama, just east of Timmons (3617, to be exact), and  I think that's it.

A high wall obscures everything except the tops of some trees and some plastic-covered unidentifiable things that could be old boxes or old furniture, and if you really crane your neck, you can see that the trees are in a big yard without much of anything else in it--as though, perhaps, after the demise of the little farm, the trees and yard had remained, no longer Brigadoon-like, no longer like much of anything, but still set back and hidden from view. 

According to a sign on the street, a contracting business called Doerner Industries has an office somewhere on the property.

It's no longer a rural anachronism, but it's still mysterious looking.

I haven't read this entire thread from 2007 to 2 weeks ago, so I might be repeating something,  but how about Reba in River Oaks, which becomes Fairview East of Shepherd, which then becomes Tuam right before downtown?

 And Gray, which just past Shepherd becomes Inwood.

My wife went to Montrose School and remembers it well. She first attended Kindergarten there in 1951 and her teacher was Mrs. Hudson. She then went to Holy Rosary School for 4 years and returned to Montrose School for 5th and 6th grade. Her teachers were Mrs. Chandler and Mrs. Ott.  She remembers Mrs. Chandler as her favorite and best teacher of all time. She remembers the May Fete, as well as an annual Halloween Parade. The school would also invite children that went to Holy Rosary to march in the parade.

My wife lived on Stanford, a half block from the school.

The school was built in 1916, somewhere she has a picture of the school from circa 1917 with her mother standing in front of it. If we find it I'll post it,.

Wow, Mrs. Hudson was versatile, having taught both kindergarten and firth grade! Hope you find the 1917  picture. It would be fun to see it.

Did any HAIF members go to Montrose Elementary, located at 4001 Stanford, where the High School for the Preforming and Visual Arts is now? I did, from 1957 to 1963. The teachers I had, in descending order from sixth grade to kindergarten, were Mrs. Hudson, Miss Shuttle(s)worth, Mrs. Martines, Miss Shapley, Miss Millard, Mrs. de Ybarrondo, and Mrs. Lucky, as well as 2 music teachers: Mrs. Fogel and Miss Womack. All were, as I remember, quite good teachers. Others whom I didn't have but whom I remember were Mrs. Roper, Mrs. Menier, Mrs. Blackwell, Ms. Luna, and Mr. Schmidt. This latter, one of just a few male teachers, always organized the musical and dramatic programs and did so with much professionalism. Ah, and I just remembered a long-term sub we had once, named Mrs. Giles, who read us Kipling's Rikki Tikki Tavi.

Every spring we would have a May Fete, for which we practiced assiduously, and which was (of course) performed outside, we children dancing, in choreographed  formation,  to music that was probably of Mr. Schmidt's choosing. 

The school's architecture and layout closely resembled that of Lantrip Elementary, still standing at 100 Telephone road: Spanish-mission style architecture, with arches, open-air corridors, and interior courtyards that had flowers, bushes, and the like.

Not infrequently, I wonder about fellow Montrose alumni, and what they remember about the school.

This is just a shot in the dark, but I'm wondering if any HAIF members attended "The Oaks" preschool in the 1950s (and I think it still existed in the same spot, but under a different name, through the sixties). It was was on, or close to, the 3000 block of Rosedale, a stone's throw from the University of Houston (I remember that detail because one day my father, on his way from teaching at U. of H. to pick me up, spotted a toddler standing by the railroad track, surmised, correctly, that she had wandered away from the school, and came to get me with the little girl on his hip--averting a tragedy.  If something like that happened today ... ).

We children could see the railroad track from the playground. The school was, I believe, in the home of the owner/director. I even remember it had a flowering pomegranate tree at the front gate.  Teachers I remember are Mrs. Campbell (or as I called her at age 3, Mrs. Camel),  Miss Vaugn, and (I think) a Mrs. Herbst. The school was for children aged three to six.

I know that it was still in existence in the late '60s because around the age of 18 I stumbled upon it, recognized it, went in and looked at the playground, and was surprised that the playground equipment I remembered as huge was, in fact, tiny--as befitted a school for pre-schoolers. It had a different name then, which I don't remember.

It seems that the SW corner of Timmons is a plausible candidate; tilled fields behind the treed house-lot, and gone by '73... (historicaerials.com link)

Yeah, the SW corner of Timmons makes sense! Because it was far enough west of the back of Lamar High school (as I remember) that you couldn't see it from right there; it was almost certainly a few blocks to the west. Timmons would be just aboutg right. And when I came back from college in '73 it was gone. Thanks, Strickn! (But it looks like I'm the only one that actually remembers seeing the little farm).

Another quirky Village store I remember from the '90s was a handcrafts shop called Iowa and Guatemala, which sold hand-made folk art crafted by rural Iowans and rural Guatemalans.

I think you mean El Meson.  It's still there, and still good.

It's actually Mexican-Spanish-Cuban. I don't know if the elderly owners I knew are still living, but the husband was a Spaniard, the wife was a Cuban, and the adult son was a sort of Cuban/Spanish/Tex-Mex-American Houstonian. Very nice people, all three of them.

There was a half-priced books in an old bldg. I used to frequent in West U. I loved walking through, checking out the details of the place, 1990's, I think it was. I think it would be west of the tapas restaurant, now. Had old display windows & a back loft, balcony, staircase, and a tiny smaller room to the left. Reminded me of those '50's ladies clothing stores at Gulfgate. 

It's still there. It's now double the size it was, though, because a few years ago it took over the space of what had been a baby-clothes-and-accessories store.  (Come to think of it, in the late 80s and early ninties,

Rice Village had two baby stores. Was there a baby boomlet in those years?)

Some years ago I mentioned this, but nobody remembered it. Maybe some new/old members will.

When I was at Lamar High School in the '60s, there was a Brigadoon-like little farm nearby on Alabama. It was, I think, just a bit west of Buffalo Speedway, on the south side of the street: a small farm with rustic farmhouse and cornfield, often being hoed by an elderly lady in a sunbonnet. There was/were skyscraper(s) on either on or both sides; next door, or almost so, was a convenience store.

There was, at the time, absolutely nothing rural about that part of W. Alabama except the amazingly incongruous little farm. Some big oak trees partly obscured it, but, of course, not entirely, or I wouldn't have seen it and wondered about it so intensely. (When I drive past where it must have been, I try unsuccessfully to pick out what may be its still-extant trees; and it could have been east of Buffalo, but not by much).

I went off to college in 1969 and had other things to wonder about. By the time I was really grown up and looked for it again, it was long gone. Does anybody remember that little hold-out farm and its bonnetted owner?

I think I remember the Kinkaid private school being across, or almost across, the street from the Richmond Weingarten's.  Correct??

Yes, it was. I know because, as a small child I was taken along with my parents to the polling place when they said, "We're going to Kincaid to vote." (I was too small to know what a kincaid was, but I took them at their word). 

Then in maybe 1958 or so, the Kincaid building was bought by the Seventh Day Adventist church, and it was a church and religious school from then until at least the end of the '60s.

The house next door to mine on Branard was purchased to be their parsonage; the pastors were apparently transferred frequently, and I played with--and later babysat--the children of the pastors of the church-that-was-located-where-Kincaid-used-to-be.  Without exception, the families were excellent neighbors.  Is  the Richmond Ave.  Post Office what's on the site now?

If I had to guess, the Weingarten opened in '64 or '65, because the Fiesta's lease was supposed to expire in 2014, which would give the grocery store a full 50 years lease.

HCAD (link) says the shopping center was built in 1962 (the Wilshire Village Shopping Center, that is, which is what was built and the Susanne replaced), and the "Economic Obsolescence" being "Very Poor". However, that may or may not be the date Weingarten opened. Maybe '6

Regarding the year 1962 and the timeline:  I know that for a short time after  the closing of the 1420 Richmond Ave. Weingarten's, there opened (for a year, maybe, or less?) a store--indistinguishable from Weingarten's--called Texas Serve-all.  And I'm fairly sure it was before 1962: maybe 1961 or 1960.

In fact, my memory tells me that the sequence of events were  (1) the closing of the Richmond Ave. Weingarten's  (2) the opening of the new Dunlavy Weingarten's where the vacant lot was no more

(3) the new Weingarten's suddenly and briefly changing its name to Texas Serve-all 

(4) the "Serve-all," after a year or less, changing its name back to Weingarten's.

This last change would have ocurred about 1962, I feel sure. And before too long, there appeared the T.G.&Y and the Mading's drug, converting the place, as it were, into a strip center, where at the very beginning (I think) it had been just a grocery store.

My wife lived at the Wilshire Village apartments in 1956/57 when she was 10. They were very nice apartments in those days......

I remember that they were quite nice.

Libby, did you live on Branard? We lived on the next street over at 1525 Sul Ross. I well remember the vacant lot but after graduation in 63 I left for college and don't remember a lot about the area after that time period. I did notice in later years passing through the area that a grocery store had went up at that location. I have lots of fond memories from the fifties and early sixties of that area.

Yes, I did. I lived on Branard from 1951 to 1969.

I think they mean "liked", not actually done with a shovel.

Of course. Literal me!

Libbie, sounds like you have vivid memories of the place. The thing that always struck me about it was even in its neglected state which is only how I knew it to be, that complex had a charm about it and I had the sense back in its heyday it would have looked really nice and certainly well built. I don't necessarily mean luxurious or anything, but nice. And I dug those courtyards.

You dug those courtyards? Wow!

I don't have any history to add but out of all the grocery stores in Houston that little Fiesta was by far my favorite. I only started shopping there in 2005 but I loved its small size and selection. I suppose the eclectic items reflected the clientele along with stocking the regular everyday staples we all need.

 

The only grocery store like it that I know of is Fresh Market in terms of small footprint but they're catering to a more high end consumer. Along with the history of the shopping center, does anyone remember much about the old apartment complex across the street that is now the HEB? It looked so old before it was torn down. Does anyone have any history on it?

The old apartment complex was called Wilshire Village. It was there when Fiesta was still a vacant lot, and it was there till it was torn down for the erecting of HEB.  In the early sixties its manager was a Mrs. Davis. I went to school (Montrose Elementary) with her daughter, and I played with her there a time or two. In recent years it declined greatly.

Has anyone been connected to the defunct Dunlavy Fiesta (1994-2012), its strip center neighbors, and its past lives, during any subset of the past five or (nearly) six decades? From my earliest memory until maybe 1959, the location was known to Branard street dwellers as "the vacant lot at the end of the block," or to some neighborhood children as "The weeds."  It was a sort of untidy but pleasant unofficial park. Then, some time between mid and end-of decade, the construction started, and the lot was vacant no more.

The Weingarten's that had been at 1420 Richmond Ave (The building's still there; in the '70s it was a country-western dance hall) closed and relocated to the Dunlavy Fiesta site.  To its right, little by little, there grew up a T.G.&Y store, a Mading's Drug (Does anyone have a picture from that era? ) which later became an Eckerd's, a Supermatic Cleaners, and a barber shop. There was a Junior Achievement building a little to the south, sharing the same big parking lot. (The latter MAY have been the first thing constructed, on the site, pre-Weingartens. Memory fails on that point).  Thus, instead of "The vacant lot at the end of the block," there was the Weingarten's at the end of the block, along with its companions.  At first it was possible to walk from Mandell down Branard to Weingarten's, but crime started to increase on that dead end street, so the roadblock was made imprenetrable to foot traffic as well as car traffic.  (It helped).

I don't know the year that the Weingarten's became a Safeway.  It and most other Safeways became Apple Tree in the early '90s, of course, and then in '94 the Dunlavy Apple Tree became Fiesta. I liked it because it was one of the few supermarkets still small enough to just run in, grab a few things, and run out. And I especially liked it because it represented a chain of continuity with my childhood: the grocery store, whatever its name, at the end of the block.

So I was sorry two years ago when it and its companion businesses fell to the wrecking ball. The HEB across the street is pleasant and well-stocked, although pretty big for the park-and-run-in-and-run-out sort of shopping that Fiesta/Apple Tree/Safeway/Weingarten's permitted. I was sorry to see it go. It was, for me, at least, the end of an era.

I was using my lap top earlier and didn't have any pictures on it. I have found the picture, hope you enjoy it. It also has a big Rettig's ice cream sign on it too. Looking close at the picture it appears that an A & P store was next to the drug store. The photo is from the Sloane collection so we will give him credit for the pic. I have posted two pictures one from when It was built and the other as it looks now.

That's a fantastic old picture! And it DID have a Rettig's ice cream sign on it. It is delightful beyond all logic to see that old picture.  You have helped me to scratch a decades-old memory itch! Thank you.

Ah! And I think there was also a Taxidermist and Tanners shop that opened up in the same Richmond-at-Mandell strip center, in the very early sixties.

Jesse came to my wedding, so I looked back at the wedding book and saw he signed his, and her, name... Mr & Mrs J. C. Cardwell.

Thinking back, I guess I was a bit premature in thinking he might have retired in the late 60's.  I guess, when you're in your teens, someone who's in his 30's seems old, and in your 20's, someone who's in his 40's looks "old".

I did some research and found a Jesse C. Cardwell, who was born in 1917 and died in 1994. That would have have him at 33 in 1950.  Wonder if that's our Jesse?

 

Could be. The dates make sense.