Favorite Style Skyscraper And Favorite Incarnation Of That Skyscraper

[bobruss]

On 11/1/2013 at 1:06 PM, infinite_jim said:

Looks strange to see Dryden at Main so treeless and shadow-less compared to now. This bldg was like a case study for G. Bunshaft in designing the Lever House podium in NYC and eventually One City Centre in terms of prelim solar design.

What really looks strange is how vacant the medical center  is. This is in the heart of the med center, and you can't see another building. I believe this was either the spot or close to the location of Bill Williams fried chicken restaurant .

[mkultra25]

6 hours ago, bobruss said:

What really looks strange is how vacant the medical center  is. This is in the heart of the med center, and you can't see another building. I believe this was either the spot or close to the location of Bill Williams fried chicken restaurant .

 

Bill Williams' restaurant was in the 6500 block of Main, which is indeed at Dryden at Main (where the Bioscience Research Collaborative building is located now). I've seen a Bill Williams menu from the 1940s that gives its location as "on South Main, across from Rice Stadium", but that would have been referring to the old Rice stadium, where the track is now, not the current one that was erected in 1950.

[bobruss]

It was great fried chicken and at the time it was one of the main restaurants in Houston, along with the Ye Olde College Inn, and Valians pizza which was across Fannin from the Shamrock.

Lee's den was the best Chinese on South Main at OST and right in front of an old trailer park. Needless to say, there weren't a lot of great restaurants around  town in the late 50's early sixties. It just goes to show you if you want something enough it can happen. 

And now we're one of the great food cities in the U.S.