videoguy

Yeah, it does kinda different now. Who decided to paint it that awful yellow color?

Several weeks ago I went to the Memorial City Mall and wow, it's awesome. However, I heard that it wasn't always as vibrant, busy, unique, and upscale as it used to be.

Any anecdotes/photos?

What a fascinating thread. I used to hang out at Memorial City a lot when I lived in Houston in the mid to late 1970's and early 1980's. I'm surprised there aren't any pictures of the interior around, so I've posted a couple I have in an old album. They were taken by my Dad in 1975 not long after my family moved to Houston, and are views from the bridge over the fountain at the first crossover.

This one is looking north towards Montgomery Ward's. The craft store mentioned in the earlier post is to the right. I recall someone telling me it used to be a grocery store somewhere back in the dim distant past, but I don't know if that's true or not. Up that end of the mall at the time was also the Houston Trunk company, a store that sold "party supplies" (mainly paper plates and plastic glasses) and a place that sold electronic keyboards and organs.

This one is looking west towards where Lord and Taylor's first store would be built a couple of years later. At the time this was the main entrance to the mall, and had a portico over the door. Next to the entrance was an insurance office. Further down there was a barber shop, candle store, and a place called "Orange Julius" which sold a soft drink of the same name.

Just hidden behind the tree to the left of the picture was Walgreen's. They had their own entrance from the parking lot. At the mall end they had a coffee shop with an old-fashioned soda fountain where you could get ice-cream sundaes in tall glasses and triple-decker sandwiches held together with toothpicks. I was surprised to read that the mall was only built in the 1960's as the coffee shop looked much older (like it was from the 1940's or 50's) so it may have been transplanted from another, older Walgreen's.

I remember EJ's well. It had a model racing car in a glass case out front of the store -- a Bugatti or Mercedes (or something similar) from the 1930's. It was incredibly detailed, right down to the miniature car keys. Next door to EJ's was Record Town.

Another store I remember from that part of the mall was called Columbus, or Cornelius (or something like that). It had an eclectic mix of merchandise including wicker baskets and metal goblets. They had a suit of armor by the door that nobody ever bought.

The theater was nice -- until they divided it in half so they could show two movies at a time. I saw "Return of the Pink Panther" starring Peter Sellars there. Apart from the restaurants it was the only place open on Sundays at the time, which was kind of weird.

Next to the theater was a place that sold pizza by the slice. It was served up by really cute girls in VERY tight hotpants (well, this was the 1970's). All the fast food places seemed to shut down when the food court was opened -- this would have been about 1980-81. I don't know of this was a coincidence, or if the people running the mall wanted all the food in one area. Even Walgreen's ripped out the coffee shop and replaced it with a one hour photo processing lab.

I last visited MC around 1984, not long before I moved away from Houston. It looked pretty much the same as the photos -- except Lord and Taylor's had been built and the shack looking stores to the left of the lower photo had been taken down -- but the decor was starting to look tired and dated. I gather it looks a bit different now !