Materene

11 hours ago, Dave W said:

The Stock show ride (Salt Grass Trail Ride) ends at Memorial Park, not Hermann Park, and it's always been in February.

Riders could be seen any time of the year on the Hermann Park trails.

I've been gone for over 45 years, but I did ride trail in a club before then and our rides even came in from north to south along south main.  I forget where the turn was made but post oak was definitely one of the major crossings.  It was legal then and not just restricted to the beginning of the Fat Stock Show which it was called then.  Most were out north of Houston as far as FM 1960.

Sounds like you probably saw the annual Stock show riders, was this during the Fall you saw those riders.  Myself I never heard mention of the Hermann sawmill.  I read up on his history and he actually served in the civil war under the confederacy.  He died in 1914 leaving his fortune made in many ventures oil timber and other things to build the hospital.  Hermann hospital I am familiar with being 75 years old.  I searched all over and could not find any photos in that era of his properties.  Rice Photo library has a lot of old Houston photos.  I love looking at those old photos.  Houston had a lot of History including the pre WWI Army base there in the Memorial area.  Even Galveston had a large Army base in the very early days.  Getting back to topic I would think his sawmill would be in that general area of the old stable.  It would have had to be near a water outlet unless they were taking down very local timber and moved it by horse or mule or both.  One thing I found on reading his history was his per luck chance of buying land in Humble and it having oil.  That of course made his fortune.  To me it comes as a remembrance of being 5 years old and my grandmother and her best friend taking we two kids out to Humble in the oil field back roads for a early afternoon snack of Shipley's Doughnuts and cold milk.  We all sat on a blanket and it was so peaceful and pretty in the early 50s.  We would pick blackberries and of course the elders called them dew berries, but we would find buckets and buckets of berries.  There was no people living out that way so few people knew about the berries.  Lots of cows out there at the time and my family was old time folks that would also go out there and pick poke salad.  It had to be on pastured land to find it.  It was almost like spinach but prepared the same way and in the 50s canning was a part of living.  My Great Grandfather worked at a water powered sawmill and I have a photo of him on the saw mill .  It had to be in the late 1800s, another job he had and was photoed was him riding herd on livestock in Cisco Texas.  I have that picture also.  I will have to try one day and scan those two old photos and post them here.

I live 3 hundred fifty miles from Houston but I have found a map quest location of the stables,  I never knew about the lumber mill but I would assume it was in that same area.  I will see what I can find and pass along anything I find.  About the Blvd Trees I really don't know the purpose of the planting but since it borders the University I always thought they were responsible for planting the trees.  There are some excellent photos taken from the top of the Warwick Hotel looking down onto the Blvd shortly after they were planted and that was around 28 I believe.  The University of Houston was the library I saw them on the internet.  Those photos show a different Houston than all of us living today ever saw, it was flat and few buildings going south, except for the Hospital and medical building further out.  Endless trees and nothing  ha.  Here is the map quest street view and naming of the stable area.  

https://www.mapquest.com/us/texas/hermann-park-stables-439522721

3 hours ago, Highrise Tower said:

I'm still looking for George Hermann's saw mill/lumber company that was based on Fannin Street/South Main Street where present day Hermann Park is located.

While researching I found a glimpse of his stables located on some avenue. I cannot read it. Maybe someone could look in old City of Houston directories and find the correct address? It's probably located in the city core given the ancient date.

Very cool history here! Just imagine meeting Mr. Hermann and buying livery.

From the newspaper The Houston Daily Post dated November 23, 1897.

G.H. Hermann, stable, ? avenue; $15.

That area has changed so much in only my lifetime I hardly recognize it.  My first time to be in that area was when I was about 5 at the zoo.  All the things I remember in the 70s are gone.  Now you might search the Rice or UH Historical photos, they have a lot of really old stuff donated over the decades.  I still remember all the old downtown buildings in the 60s were still for the most part non air conditioned because they had been standing for so long.  It is easy to still spot any still standing because they all have those really high windows that open, it was the only way to stay almost cool in summer.  Oh before I forget I was going to say a very close friend of my ex wife and myself told me about 17 years ago that her Late Father had planted all those first batch of trees lining the South Main Blvd in the 20s.  Some are still standing even with the street widening and other improvements.  The Lady belonged to one church that was 90 years old when I left Houston in 2008, she had died a few days before I left and she was almost 80.  Sadly her church closed forever when it became impossible to draw people to church, but that was after her death so at least she was spared of the bad news.  My old church Baptist Temple did the same and sold off all of the church property except one small office.  In 1955 the church consumed two city blocks and the entire area across the street for church parking.  It was full every sunday.

Two flights from Hobby for me in 75 years.  First flight was to Fort Ord Ca. Monterey.  Infantry Training Feb 1966.   The second flight was from Hobby to San Diego Ca to drive a rented U Haul back to Louisiana.  I had to remember the timeline a bit because I kept thinking about the travel to RVN in late 67.  I mistakenly thought I had left Hobby for Fort Lewis and departure from there.  It was DFW I left from to Fort Lewis.  At any rate I scarcely remember it as it looked so long ago.

I look at the freeway shots and recognize nothing today.  I remember 59 starting at the northern end of Jensen Drive but previous to becoming 59 it was a narrow blacktop 2 lane.  1960 off 45 was Jack Rabbit Road, nothing but pines trees.  On the weekends we would drive out to 1960 and picnic and shoot a 22 rifle into the woods. 

Left the service in Aug 70 and I had been away for 5 years so when we were landing at Intercontinental I looked out my window and was wondering where to heck are we ?  I never even knew there was a new airport.  I do know in the very early fifties and late forties on the eastern side of the airport authority land was the old North Houston Speedway, a small dirt auto racing track.  It was surrounded by cow pastures then.  Typical old wooden bleachers.  Just a few  years ago you could still see the oval impression of the old track which has been gone for decades.  I enjoyed the photos,  thanks so much to the poster
 

So sorry to be almost 3 years late saying thank you, that happens often once you're over 70.    ;0)   I look back on the old photos and remember a time long long ago.  Sadly most of the people in my world back then are gone now.  I knew a lot of people in 1970 who all met there at the drive inn nightly.  They also would hang out at the old McDonald's Drive Inn, not to be confused with the soon to be world known McDonald's but the original private independent owned Houston business.  Interestingly the new up and coming McDonald's sued that owner and lost  I suppose they had no calendar.  I think it is now a Burger King on the same location but smaller due to street widening. 

The only thing that's missing is a Train stop right smack in the middle of the Lobby.   Looking at the photos of current progress I think all the initial planning was tossed out a few years ago.  I wish I could be around 50 years from now to read about the 3rd or 4th revival.

Anyone happen to have or know of any old photos of the old Bill Williams Drive Inn , the MD Anderson Cancer Center now sits on the old location.  It appears the street was filled in and removed for the new center to be built.  I am not sure what year this happened since I have been gone from Houston since 82.  It was a typical drive in but had indoor eating also.  In 1970 it was a street racing scene hang out.  I did find some old menus and historical images a few years ago but no actual location photos.

Thanks

1 hour ago, Specwriter said:

"Modernization" circa early 1960's. Yes, this will be a novel building once again when restored.

Simply because starting in the early 70s all store fronts that were plate glassed became favorite targets for the thieves and they were literally stealing merchants like Sears into bankruptcy. They became eyesores once the massive bricking took place, you would have to be born in my era to appreciate the vast difference in the mindset of America in just a few short years, I hope that explains it.

Ellington will outlive me I think, both locations mentioned in this post have very old relevance to me, for one when I was still pretty young around 5 or 6 I had medical care there at the Field as many other dependents of servicemen did.  At the time my Father was stationed on the USS Los Angeles Heavy Cruiser ported in Long Beach so that is one thing I will forever remember.  The other memory is the old Sears store and after I returned to civilian life after the Army I went to work for Al Parker Buick and I purchased my very first tools at that Sears location because Al Parker service department had a charge account and this was a time your employers looked after veterans and servicemen going out of their way to help you get a foot hold back into your life.  Strange how a few things reconnect when so many others have all but faded and disappeared forever.  I think it is nice both of these places will be around for a very long time and someone else will remember them 65 or more  years later and they might tie a different memory to the both of them.  I don't live in Houston any longer and only get bits and pieces of information now , reading this forum has been very useful and insightful to me.

Remember the market from many decades ago, in the fifties the market was always on my families shopping list.  We still had a mule drawn produce wagon in the Heights circa 1956 that would cover the entire area.  An old Black man must have been in his 80s and I suppose the man did this until he finally died.  Really was pretty quiet and peaceful back in the day.  Of course most homes already had fruit trees in their backyards, it was just something that survived the old depression era where people had to grow their own things.  Our old place had an apple tree, fig trees, and plums not to forget the large Pecan trees which by the way are still there on the property.  Its nice to look at the old place and it still survives and especially the tall Pecan in the front yard.  I can remember my Grandmother using a very long cane fishing pole and burning out the worm nest up high in that Pecan tree.  My last time to visit that market mentioned in the post was way back in 67 and I was home one weekend on leave from the Army while stationed in the Dallas Fort Worth Air Defense, I tried to drive home every weekend I could and one trip I went to the market to get a few things, can't remember the details it was a long time ago and of course looked a lot different than it does today with so many changes over the decades.

I really can't remember if there was a smaller building on that eastern grass plot, to enter the Training center you would park in front and enter thru front doors to walk down a long hall that had a the class rooms separated.  To the right nearer the entrance was a very large cafeteria area that was every bit as large as a regular middle school.   In 70 there was not a lot going on at the center as I recall, I'm sure they may have scheduled division classes as they had instructors available for each.  I actually ran into another engineer 30 years later here in La who had personally known the instructor I had in 70.   Things changed drastically in the 80s with divisions starting to share components so they naturally down sized training to only two or three divisions or less.  It would be nice to see a photo of the original building as it appeared, also the old Al Parker Buick downtown on Milam, no photos of it to be seen anywhere.   I know for a fact that the day after Mrs Parker had died her son sold the dealership which was then located on I-10 and the Mercury dealership owner purchased it and all the property it was located on.   In 2005  just a couple of the old people I had worked with were still working there at the new dealer.  It was a super good place to work for in the early years when Mr Parker was alive and I suspect it remained the same after his son took over upon his death.  Thanks for your information

I am pretty certain this is the property of what was once the GM training center for Houston.  That long driveway coming off Richmond ave is a dead give a way simply because that was how it was laid out and each division class room had a roll up door so the drive way serviced the entire complex.  The main building was actually on that grassy area that is all grown over.   I remember just coming out the drive and turning right to hit the freeway to head North and this photo is looking due north.   Everything I knew of my home town is gone now, even the Buick Dealership I was working at while going here to the center is gone with another building occupying the space.  All my schools have been razed and new ones built on the same properties.   There was no divider there on Richmond as I remember but it has been almost 47 years so I might be wrong and there would have been no trees at that time for sure.   My Instructor was a Buick engineer retired and I specifically remember going out to the ship channel where all the Opel imports were stored and having to jack up 250 cars and replace one stinking motor mount on the driver side before they could be sold  ;0(  and it was cold out there too !

Would any members know what happened to the old GM Training Center on Richmond Ave, there was a Fred Astaire Dance Studio across the street in a large shopping center.   I have no idea when it finally closed but it was open until the 80s although at that time it had been reduced to one class rather than all of the divisions having a separate class room.  As I remember it was very near the intersection of the freeway. 

I wonder if there is still a lingering smell from the stink bomb that was thrown in the theater in 58, it made the perfect setting for watching a couple monster movies back then.  There was once a seedy pool hall just a couple doors down towards the west, and back the opposite direction there was a large 5 and dime store same side of the street.  I could find a heck of a lot of junk to buy for a quarter in those days  '0)

On 9/9/2016 at 7:58 PM, Firebird65 said:

 

Hard to believe it's been FIVE YEARS since there's been a post in this thread. How time flies.

 

Welcome... better late than never, I suppose.

 

I am the one who did the research. I no longer send out the report for various reasons we won't get into here. If you are interested in the history of Aldine High School, I did put at least some of it on Wikipedia. Here is the Aldine High School Wikipedia page:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldine_High_School

 

Not sure when or if you'll be reading this, but if you are anyone else coming across this, I'm posting on Sep. 9. Tomorrow (Sep. 10) is the 60th anniversary of the opening of Aldine High's current campus on Airline at West Rd.

 

 

The reason you can't see any of the maps or pictures is because the website that hosted them put an expiration date on them. Kinda stupid, if you ask me. Now, fortunately, you can attach things directly to a post. Back when this thread was created, 10 years ago, that was not possible.

 

Yes, there was/is another thread about Aldine on here. That one is specifically about the schools whereas this one tended to be more about the area. I doubt there's been a post there in five years either. 

 

I  don't know how old you are Firebird65, do you by chance remember the old dirt track that was named North Houston Speedway, it was a little 1/4 mile dirt track surrounded by pastures and had wooden bleachers ..   Every Saturday evening we were there when I was around 6.  There were stand vendors selling bottled beer and would walk up and down the bleachers hollering "Cold Beer", they would open the bottle and pour it into a wax cup of the day and stick the empty back into a second pail they were carrying.  I had a good friend who passed away in 08 and he had worked for the new airport authority and he said that the old track was still there on airport property and you could still make out the track,  sure nuff a couple years ago I looked at google earth and there was definitely a race track outline on the recent update of google,  things change so much now I have no idea if it is still visible.  I'm sure one day they will expand and it will be bull dozed into non existence.   I spent my entire young life there on the north side and later the heights.  When I was born the family lived I think on Doverside just off Berry Rd .  Many years later I lived on the corner of Gears Rd and Stubner Airline and of course Gears was renamed several times since 72.  There is a strip mall located on that corner now and that is where I was living  then.  

Wasn't Crown once named Crow Flite in the 50s, their colors were Green and White with the Black Crow.  I can't remember what street it was that the office was located but I do remember it had a chilled water cooling tower on the property and we would park under that tower waiting on my Grandfather, he drove a Gas Hauler for them back then.  It was nice and cool there near the tower with cool drops of water falling from the tower.  Many early businesses used chilled water rather than commercial air conditioning.  Just a large water tower that circulated water in and out of a 4 inch line and usually a small compressor room with a few compressors to actually cool the water as it circulated but it was always going back to outside air to dump the heat it brought out of a building.  Same type of air conditioning used on most of our sky scrappers of that era, just on a much smaller scale.

I'll assume you haven't been by there in quite some time. The old Landmark complex was acquired in January 2011 by a John Deere dealer who relocated their heavy equipment dealership there after demolishing the old buildings and building new ones. I believe they subdivided the property with the intent to resell some of it, as the new dealership buildings don't take up nearly as much room as the massive Landmark complex did. 

 

The new dealership just opened recently. 

 

https://goo.gl/maps/hUbwZRTih7v

My last dealership job was in 89 and there at Landmark, I had worked there 3 times since the early 70s until that time.  I left the first workday after Thanksgiving 1989 and it was the last dealership I worked in, came back to where I live now and never will forget it, one of those fall cold rain fronts got hooked up with me and I drove in a driving rain all the way to Louisiana.

Was'nt it called Snelling Mercury at one time. I seem to remember a cougar image on their logos.

Would you be thinking it might have been Plaza Lincoln Mercury.  I worked there in 72 and Joe Woods was the service manager at that time.

Diversity ha, I really enjoy reading the entries for anything concerning the Heights especially since I am probably one of the very few who actually lived in the old Heights before it magically became fashionable.  Spending a fortune on something that was old in the 50s is just bad math no matter how bad you really wish it weren't.  One day the winds will shift and you will find yourselves wondering what happened.  I once sit in a classroom there at Eugene Fields and would fall asleep from the nice fresh smell of Magnolia, drag papers to the paper drive on Tuesdays and hide that nickel from the big guys so I would be able to buy that snow cone on wednesday afternoon.  Not much of a neighborhood when you can't send your kids to the schools.   

I worked at several in this list but I would like to see an Al Parker Buick photo early 70s .  The old location is now a new structure and the street that once ran down the side of the building was closed and added as one property for this new business.  The old customer and storage lot was across the street in 70 which is now part of this one property

All those areas were always known as non white areas, it was a subject not spoken about, just assumed everyone knew the bondaries back then.  I only go back to 48 but I do know what the city boundaries were then and often rode the city buses with my Grandmother and of course it was still signs in the bus that told Black folks sit in the rear, there were Black water fountains everwhere.  To see a map outlined like this would be a normal thing.  For anyone to be born after this period in history it is hard to understand, Black folks and other non white communites were existing in their own little cities more or less unless they were working outside, they had their own stores own schools pretty much sef contained so to speak.  Non whites did not go into these areas.  For older people like myself it is hard to understand why today after so much change and progress it is suddenly under attack and we find ourselves blamed for failures not instigated by us.  I know where it stems but this is not a political forum so I'll just for once be quiet.

Yes that seems to be it, here is what it now looks like and they were busy remodeling when I left Houston again 6 years ago, a little erie because just a block down Shepherd is the old Presbyterian Church that was my close friends whom both died within two months of one another and I left at that time after the funeral and moved back to La, I see the Church is now no longer the Presbyterian but something different. All our Churches are almost gone now, the good friend was a friend of my ex wife from back early 70's , she had been a member of this Church for 80 years, and now like her, it's gone.  I wouldn't have known this unless I had seen this post about the building in question.  I won't be surprised when I finally come home at the end of this winter.  Let's see if I can get those google images showing.  That pawn shop over across the street from the one above, I can remember pressing my face against the front plate glass as a young kid.

Yeeaaa, something older than I am

Well horse drawn wagons were still allowed in Houston in the mid 50's so there was still money to be made selling out the back of a wagon, maybe the woman had some buyers for her crops.  There was an old colored gentleman that had a mule team which pulled a very old rubber tired wooden wagon in the Heights as late as 58.  My family bought fresh vegetables from him often.  Nothing like progess.... I guess