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Has anyone ever seen this film (circa 1943) starring Robert Mitchum and William Frawley?

I believe it opens with some of the main characters arriving in College Station by train.

Yes! Gig 'em Aggies! This film was shot on campus and at the actual train station, no longer there, for which this town is named. I have a deluxe set on VHS, but you can order a DVD from a couple of sources:

http://www.1939aggies.com/Order.html

http://www.collegegear.com/sf/stores/1046/p-201342.shtml

Here's the write-up about the film:

http://class.aggienetwork.com/class60/wnbl.htm

I hope no one here was caught in the traffic jam last Saturday, as TXDOT demolished the double bridges of NASA Rd. 1 which straddled over the freeway with a clover leaf entrance design that better suited the sparse rural traffic of decades gone-by. TXDOT will now complete the Gulf Freeway overpass lanes, giving it a traditional urban treatment for such an interesection.

Since Bay Area Blvd. bridge also has the antiquated clover leaf design, I was wondering if anyone knows if it will be the next to be reconfigured.

Well, I am certainly glad to have come across this thread while searching for something totally different! I have been fascinated by this house since about 1989, as I drove past the back side of it on I-10. The wonderful brick architecture, in an area that typically held wooden frame homes, was very intriguing. About 10 years ago, I was determined to find the front of this house and did some road navigation to find it way back off of Houston Street. Back then, the area had already declined to a sad state. Now, with the developments over the last 5 years, I can see why this property has become lucrative, and I hope it is restored.

Thanks for the wonderful research.

Another view of the old Brookline school

Of interest, HISD actually has a web page which discusses school histories and the story behind their names:

http://www.houstonisd.org/HISDConnectDS/v/...00052147fa6RCRD

It says this about the school:

"BROOKLINE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

6301 South Loop East

Brookline Elementary School, one of several campuses named after a residential community, was located on Telephone Road when it first opened in 1914. The new building on the South Loop was built in 1953."

While doing a search for Park Place Pharmacy, a very cool-looking pre-1957 building (I wonder if it is still in business?), I came across a fascinating link for a new book that I surely will buy a copy of! Telephone Road, Texas by Burton Chapman. According to an audio interview at that web site, Mr. Chapman is looking for more information about the area, as well as many other historical sites, and many of you here probably would be able to add your stories and remembrances.

http://blogs.chron.com/bayoucityhistory/20...on_chapman.html

Check out this topic.

Ah, yes, it was a car dealership.... Thank you!

Speaking of circular, crenulated roofed buildings.... what about a similar looking structure that is/was on the east side of I-45, inside the Loop, just south of Cullen Blvd., beside the modern Catholic Charismatic Center? That building and the Carrousel Motel look remarkably similar! I always thought it was an old car dealership, but I am not sure. In historicaerials.com, it is built by the 1964 survey. What was it?

I am glad to see this discussion about what is now just concrete foundation slabs. I was wondering what used to be there, as I whizz by on 610! Thanks for all the info.

I did a search on Google Maps for "Lake Alaska, Texas" and it popped up as a horsehoe lake (vestigial from one of Oyster Creek's old bends), off of Hwy. 521 NW of Angleton, and still has streets and homes around it. Love the name of one street... "Primrose Path"!

Oak Place. A beautiful area in its heyday. "The Oaks" was a grand estate, built around 1909-1910 by noted architects, Sanguinet and Staats, for the for Edwin Parker. It was designed in the "Prairie Style" made popular by Frank Lloyd Wright. It sat on a large, circular plot of land surrounded by Oak Place, Bremond, Baldwin and Hadley Streets. The home was purchased by Capt. James Baker in 1923 and upon his death in 1941, the property was left to the Rice Institute. They transferred it to MD Anderson Hospital, which made a hospital out of the home. You can see photos and a write up about the main house in Houston's Forgotten Heritage, by Houghton, Scardino, Blackburn & Howe (pp. 186-187). This estate was demolished by the mid 1960's, but the "smaller cottage" where the Parkers lived while their large home was being constructed, lasted longer. In 1989, I drove the area and took photos. Here are some of my photos of the cottage, which sat facing east on Hadley, with Webster Street to its north (right) and Oak Place to its south (left side of photo). There was also an old tennis court behind the cottage.

No, no...you misunderstand. I was referring to that in the original Village, one could not walk to Joske's without crossing the road, which is, at least in present day, Queensbury Rd.

That is correct. As I said before, the original shopping center was built for cars.

This has been a helpful web site to see old configurations:

http://www.historicaerials.com/

Type in "Town & Country" for the Landmark. Zoom out. Hit the 1973 tab to see the original mall layout that I referred to. You can see Sakowitz and the road configuration at the time. Also visible, is the long building on the east side, east of Joske's that was the antique mall/ice skating rink.

OK, these photos are from the Nov. 1990. The house was for sale for $200K. In Nov. 1997, the house was being demolished. A Houston Chronicle article was written about it on Nov. 26, 1997.

What it was like to be on the porch. Imagine sitting in a rocking chair in the old days.

The bright one is from the second floor central hallway, looking towards front of house. Turret room door is on right. The hallway had beautiful, lustrous wood floors.

The "spliced" panorama shot is from the ground floor entry, standing in the turret. Behind the entry hall fireplace, each room had a corner fireplace.

The last photos, showing rear elevations of the home, you can see the space for the old water cistern, between the 2 ground floor windows on the left side. A circular concrete foundation remained at the location. That little extended doorway was most likely not original to this house.

I was quite interested in trying to save this house and get it moved around 1991. I spoke with historical societies and house movers about this. At the time, we even got a tour of the house from a realtor, as it was up for sale after having been lawyers' offices in the 1980's. I will try to find the pictures I took while on that tour, and post them soon.

A quick visit to my new friend "Historic Aerials" verifies that you are correct. In the southwest corner of the aerial photo you can see the houses from the right hand side of the 1-45 League City photo, and you can also see the Kobayashi house in the northeast corner of the aerial photo.

Case closed!

http://www.historicaerials.com/?poi=3435

This is a fantastic resource web site! Thanks so much for posting it. It's fun to see the past patterns.

And, rreini, when was the last time you visited ol' League City?

Fabulous guide book! I am glad to see that Webster High School made it into the index. Originally, it was not painted the creamy white color you see in the modern photo, but was of various colors (mostly red, with some black), based on the natural brick details/composition. It has wonderful heavy metal entry doors.

The book "Houston Freeways" identifies this as looking northward from around the area of El Dorado Boulevard. But I've always felt it was taken south from FM 528/Nasa 1. It can't be from FM 646 (FM 3002 before that) because there wasn't an overpass there until the 70's. I remember it being an at-grade intersection until that stretch of freeway was made into a true freeway. I feel very confident in that, 'cause I grew up in Newport and would have passed that interchange frequently on the way to Dickinson or points south.

This view is looking southwards from NASA Rd 1 intersection (FM 528). Those large power towers marching across the background are still there today, running just south of the new Academy store which is now on the east side of I-45. This area was all farmland, operated by the Japanese-American family of Kobayashi. Many of their houses and barns dotted the area around this intersection. They have been slowly removed, but the original family farmhouse, and a strip of pasture land is nestled at the NW corner of NASA Rd 1 and Kobayashi Street, surrounded by development. I believe the family still owns much of the land, but leases it out to commercial interests.

First of all, the thread link you gave is broken. Secondly, from the looks of this, the Joske's looks like it was separated by a road.

Secondly, I prepared a JPEG of the mall, but I'd still like to know the interior and where the food court was and what not. Was the third level contiguous?

Where was Penney's and Marshall Field's/Saks?

OK, well I see others answered your questions, and I fixed the dud link.

I've been looking for history on T&C Mall. I looked on some older thread here, Wikipedia, DeadMalls, and a few other places. From what I heard, it was an unrenovated place that never thrived due to poor location. I also heard that it had a canvas, tent-like roof. Anyone have pictures/floorplan descriptions/stories/etc.?

Ah, this was another one of my shopping resources, starting in about 1969, when the "mall" was actually Town & Country Village, an assemblage of mostly higher end stores, grouped as building clusters and opening to the outdoors. This village promoted store to store transport by car, making it cumbersome for shoppers to hop from store cluster to store cluster, getting into and out of their cars repeatedly. Then, there was the Houston weather that people don't like to be out in. The original main department stores were Sakowitz and Joske's, with Sakowitz located on the south side, about where Randall's Supermarket is now, and Joske's at the north side of the village. Stores in the village were designed with a Spanish style appearance, with many archways and using red terra cotta tiles for roofing. "Spanish" was a popular building style in the mid to late 1960's.

Sakowitz had a spectacular fountain in the center of its store, with small green hued mosaic tiles and some sort of metal sculpture emanating from it to spray the water. It was a one story building. Wish I had thought to take a picture, but I was a little kid at the time. Anyway, as I remember, we didn't shop much at the Village, except for the two department stores, on occasion, and some of the little shops that formed the "village". To the north of Joske's was a group of little one story shops, facing outdoor courtyards and connected by covered, porch-like sidewalks along their perimeters. It gave the area a very cozy feeling and the shops were detailed on the exterior with an abundance of wood, and a human scale that was quite intimate. Here were shops such as the pet store, from which we bought our first dog, a candle shop, card shop, a high end men's clothing shop, and a larger clothing shop on the east side of Joske's, that catered to the teenage girl of the mid to late 1970's.

Restaurants did dot the T&C acreage in free-standing, isolated locations, none connected to the shops. The Pappas BBQ restaurant was one (on the west side of the complex), and there was a large Mexican restaurant later on, just north of Sakowitz. Joske's had a small cafe located on their second floor ( the south side, I believe). As with Memorial City's original Foley's, this was a left over trend from previous decades, before the advent of the food court.

Bigger draws to the village in the 1970's were the multiplex movie theaters, Town & Country 6 and Loews 3, both located on the west side of the village, along West Belt (Beltway 8). They were always busy with moviegoers. On the east side of the northern end, (in the vicinity of the present post office) were located an antique mall and ice skating rink. These were in a vast, stand-alone, rectangular building... metal clad, I believe.

By the late 1970's/1980, the village was languishing and I remember they had gone so low as to host a wet t-shirt contest on their north side greenspace! Afterwards, the T&C owners decided to concede to Houston's heat and humidity and open up a 3 story enclosed shopping "mall" in an L-shape, in 1983. This was built to the north of Joske's, in the area that once held the courtyard stores. Again, upscale stores were the anchors, including the existing Joske's, Neiman-Marcus and Marshall Fields. Also included, was a MacDonald's and a food court type eatery location, along with glass elevators in the two axes of the L and escalators located at the corner of the L. The 3 stories were, from the beginning, overly anticipated. The third story was never fully occupied and it was rather quickly losing stores. In addition to the extant parking garage which was built just south of Luby's at that time, another parking garage was built on the west side, between the 3 story mall and the movie theaters. This last one has since been demolished.

Here is a good link to further commentary about the mall, which you may have seen:

http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/town_and_country_mall_tx.html

I believe that T&C is much better off today than it ever was in the past. The inclusion of multi-use: multi-family housing and office space within the acreage is a good move to vitalize this area. It has most everything you could want.... major retail, restaurants, post office, supermarket/pharmacy, close proximity to 2 highways. You could walk or bike from your new townhouse to any variety of amenity. Are the theaters returning in its new plan?

I just stumbled across this web site as I was looking for a picture of the "W" in the old Weingarten's logo. I'm trying to prove to my husband it's the same "W" the Washington Nationals baseball team uses. He probably wouldn't care even if I could find it...now I just want to prove it to myself! As for my neighborhood...We moved to Sharpstown in its hey-day of 1965. My Mom and Dad still live there. Our little pocket (bordered by Beechnut, Gessner, Bellaire and Fondren) has not changed much - except the trees are MUCH bigger. They just started re-modeling my old elementary school (Pat Neff) and I'm kind of nervous about that - some things I would rather be left alone. The surrounding area is what has really changed. I had a pet turtle once that I had to release to the wild - so Dad drove me to a field out in the middle of nowhere to release him...that middle of nowhere is what used to be the K-Mart on the corner of Beechnut and Highway 59. I remember when you could actually see the domed Arena theater on the corner of Fondren and 59 (only it was called something else). Now it's hidden by those two ugly black buildings on the corner. I remember when Sharpstown Mall was THE place to go. Does anyone remember the old carousel clock that was in the middle of the mall?! It had the six flags of Texas on the top and would play music and little doors would open to show different scenes from Texas as it turned around. It was very cool. I read somewhere it was a glockenspiel. Sharpstown Glockenspiel

Great photo! Something I had a fuzzy mental image of from my childhood! I remember sitting at the cafe in Walgreens, having lunch with my mom, with my arm hanging over the opening that was created by some slider window, next to the cafe booths, and listening to that carousel! This was 1968. I believe the song that played was, "Three Cheers for the Red, White & Blue!" (the Keds commercial song). I also remember that mom shopped at a grocery store (it was Mini-Max) which was located on the north side of the mall, sticking out into the parking lot, by Clarewood Drive. Another memory is that, Anissa Jones, who played "Buffy" on "Family Affair" was doing a promotion visit to Battlestein's, a smaller department store, located on the SE side of the mall. I was so excited to see her! I remember that she was on a raised platform stage, and looked sort of apprehensive and not too happy. By 1969, we moved away from this area and Memorial City became our nearest mall.

Here is a great link for some original images and info:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_AcUdTl7Aq-s/SRs-...n+Plan+1965.jpg

Scroll down to find the mall's write-up:

http://mall-hall-of-fame.blogspot.com/2008...01_archive.html

There was a Piccadilly by Sears....on the other end of the mall, near Montgomery Ward's (which is now Target) was a Luby's.

Thanks so much for posting those pictures.

I was born in 1974, so a lot of this is very early childhood memory for me....but I guess I must have spent a lot of my life in that mall I remember eating at the Walgreen's diner with my grandparents...getting a chocolate shake there as a little boy.

Excellent photos! I started going to this mall in 1969/70, and I remember that, at that time, there was no anchor store at the north end... the mall just ended with some glass exit doors. Close to that end of the mall, at that time, was a beauty parlor (on the west side). I can't remember a grocery store, but I do remember that Sharpstown Mall had one attached to it in the late 1960's. It would have made sense that a grocery store would round out the shopping services provided by the mall to the housewife of the 1960's. I believe Gulfgate, originally had one as well.

In the 1970's, if you were a senior at Memorial High School, you were able to go off campus for lunch, and York Steakhouse was a hot spot for a quick steak meal for the football players! It was cafeteria style service and was located about where the present merry-go-round is in the current food court. I have some pictures in my high school year books, but am not sure about copyright. There is one shot that looks to the east, straight down the 1970's added cross-axis. It shows the edge of 'Albert's Hosiery' and a red brick-faced 'Casual Corner' on the south side. Foley's, with its old style, lower-cased lettered sign (with a flower for its apostrophe) is visible in the distance. The floor of the mall, typical of that era, is of durable terrazzo.

I loved Orange Julius on the little west side axis of the oldest part of the mall. It seemed to be gone by 1980. Mervyn's was later (mid-1980's) attached to the west end there, where the skating rink is now. I remember that, when Foley's was built to cap off the east end of the new east wing, it was floored with wooden parquet tiles, which were very popular at the time. Shoes would 'click' on the wood, and the tiles were not so durable and ended up popping off some years later. Foley's was 1 story and there was a small cafe, within the store, located at its extreme east side. (This was something you also found in other finer department stores of the time, such as Joske's).

Lee Wards was the fabric/craft store located on the west side of the main mall axis, about where 'Hot Topic' is, now. Further north from that location, on the same side, was a Spencer's Gifts which had the venerable 'black light room' to show off the psychedelic posters! Oh, I also remember that when the mall got a face lift in the later 70's, a 'Limited' was located at the NE corner of the main axis in the older mallway.

Across from the old movie theatre, which was built as a single screen with balcony originally, I remember that, in the 70's there were some curious and unique shops, such as a 'smoke shop'. I can't remember its name. The movie theatre was split up into 2 screens by the late 70's. I didn't go there often, as the theatre complexes at Town & Country (Town & Country 6; Loews 3) were the hotspots for movies back then. The multi-cinema had just been introduced in the 1970's, and the 6 theatres seemed like a lot back then!

Briefly, in the 1980's, when the old original theatre was closed, the mall built a multi theatre complex just to the north of Sears, on the west side of the mall. I remember seeing a couple of movies there. The seats were uncomfortable. Before that, in the same location, there used to be located a large clothing store. We used to shop there a lot, but the name escapes me right now.

Another tidbit of info, is that in the early 1970's, further north from the above mentioned clothing store and also on the west side of the older mallway, was a ladies' work-out spa named 'Slenderbolic'! My mom used to go there. That space later turned into an stereo store by 1980. I believe Slenderbolic was bought out by and eventually became 'President and First Lady' (now Bally's) which built a large, stand-alone edifice in the NE corner of the mall area, north of Foley's around 1980.

I have an old copy of 'Villages Magazine' (Nov. 1992, p. 14) which also explains that the lands to the east of Memorial City Mall, bordered by Bunker Hill and Barryknoll, were once owned by the Beinhorn family and they set up a horse riding area upon that land. There is a photo of a barrel rider, from the mid-1960's, which shows the new Sears in the far distance.

If you look at the old, separate building which stands at the NE corner of Gessner and Barryknoll, you can see it is still faced in the rock which was original for the building, originally the Sears garage and auto supply store. Sears used to have a southern entrance which was their 'garden supply and hardware' entrance. I remember it being a sort of enclosed porch area.

The Piccadilly Cafeteria, located in the mall, just outside of Sears (to the east) had nifty little tray garages in its wall through which you could place your used tray on a conveyor belt which was enclosed by the wall. The Almeda Mall Piccadilly still had this feature and similar dated decor when I went to it about 5 years ago.

Oh, I also remember that, if you continued walking down the mall from Sears, also on the east side were Margo's la Mode, an import shop (old Pier 1??) and Baker's Shoes. Memorial City always had art shows which were held in the mallway during the late 1970's and early 1980's. Those were always fascinating to me.

Pipe Organ Pizza was built onto the east side of the original mall axis, before you got to the Montgomery Wards. I believe it opened in May of 1977, or possibly 1978. Mickey & Minnie Mouse would appear at 6 pm every evening and Donald Duck would be there on Saturdays!