Northwest Freeway Shoney's Inn

Picture from Google, appears to be the official picture when it was Comfort Inn
Much like the Shell off FM 1488 we covered at Numbered Exits the other day, this entry is also part of the Northwest Freeway entries but taken off the main page, with this one being removed from the page as of "Version 8.1" (and originally added in "Version 5.0").

Built as a Shoney's Inn (adjacent to the Shoney's off Northwest Freeway, though by that time, the chains had officially separated) in 1995, this became a Days Inn around 2003 and was converted to a Comfort Inn between 2005 and 2007. Around 2023 it became a co-branded Comfort Inn/MainStay Suites before becoming Sonesta Essential (Sonesta Essential NW Houston around 2024, which repainted it white with blue trim. The two-story motel has 115 rooms.

Tennis World Apartments

1985 ad with logo and features (Houston Chronicle, 9/15/85)
New apartment complexes are a dime a dozen these days and not much to distinguish between them, but there a few to try to break that mold and offer stuff that your average apartment complex couldn't, case in point, Tennis World, located at 2101 Hayes Road.

I came across it doing research for when updating another page on this site, and while Tennis World had the usual trappings of other communities oriented toward adults and young professionals (including multiple swimming pools), it featured eight lighted tennis courts, as well as a pro shop and a "resident [tennis] pro will be available to residents for complimentary lessons", with the complex itself featuring seven floorplans ranging to three-bedroom units. (source).

Lots of wood siding here. (Houston Chronicle, 6/16/1984)
From what I can tell, Tennis World maintained its popularity through the 1980s when other late 1970s builds weren't doing so hot, with 1985 adding a fitness center on the premises, though by that time they had family sections.

In 1995 the apartments were renamed to Courtside at Olympia Apartment and by 2002 Westchase Ranch Resort, and despite being renamed twice, still carried all of Tennis World's features, such as the free lessons by a tennis professional on staff. During this era, however, changes were made to the apartment's foundation. I'm not sure when the tennis pro was sacked, but the tennis courts remained up until the mid-2010s when renovations were done, and within a few years, all but three were gone (and I'm not sure if the remaining three are even still operational). Not too long after the apartments changed names again to Westside Flats before changing hands again to The Quinn at Westchase.

One other thing regarding this apartment complex is like many complexes it was later cut in half. I've seen over 700 units for quoted for this apartment complex, and that appears to be the units at 11201 Olympia Drive, which were split off in the late 2010s (it was Olympia Flats in 2018, likely resulting from the splitting of Westchase Ranch Resort and now The Corridor at Westchase).

Burger King / Shell at W. 18th Street

Picture from Google Maps (Gregston Chu, 2025). The Burger King logo on the road side was already changed.
Continuing with the theme of Burger King restaurants I've eaten at (see Burger King at 7406 Fondren Road), this one is at 4401 West 18th Street and combined with a Shell station, opening in late 2007. My main memories of it were from the first time I drove to Houston by myself to visit a friend in Pearland, and after driving on Hempstead Road (partly to avoid the 290 construction) stopped here for lunch. After I bought my hamburger, I drove to the Northwest Mall parking lot directly next to it (at the time, the parking lots connected) and ate some of it in the car. While the Northwest Mall's parking lot resembled driving on the surface of the Moon, I sat in my car and looked out at the big Pizza Inn sign in the distance and imagined it as the old, classic Burger King logo (the new one isn't actually the same) atop it.

It replaced a Texaco which operated from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, and I'm not sure if it operated as a Shell in the early to mid 2000s or as some other automobile-adjacent business.

This is an expanded version of what once appeared on Carbon-izer on the Northwest Freeway page (removed as of Version 8.0).

Chateau Memorial

It contains apartments now, though... (Houston Chronicle, 10/23/66)
Built as Chateau Memorial back around 1964 (advertising all the upscale apartment perks of the mid-1960s plus some, like weekly oven cleanings) and known as Chateau Memorial West by 1967 (the apartments of 910 Silber Road, across the street, was Chateau Memorial East, later they would be marketed under one name again). By 1989 it was going under the Villa Estates name, which included an update of the units (and based on a photograph, added a few sculptures for a vague Italian theme). The name didn't last long—Legends of Memorial first appeared for the apartment complex's name around 1991.

Looking at modern pictures today, the spiral staircase of the original clubhouse is still there, but it has been converted into additional units.

Most of the content here originally appeared on the Katy Freeway page.

Wagner Hardware

From "Liz S." on Yelp from here.
This post was originally part of Carbon-izer.com and later spun off to Numbered Exits, where it was combined with a post on Village Flowery (current Numbered Exits post here.

When it began construction of a building fronting Kirby in May 1948, Wagner Hardware already had been a known name moving from the Rice Village area, and after completing the building at 6111 Kirby Drive, continued to operate for the next 60 years. At one point, Wagner Hardware had six locations in the Houston area. By December 2004, with the closing of their store at 5233 Bellaire Boulevard (which operated since 1953), Wagner was down to this location. In 2009, it introduced a store-within-a-store for eco-friendly products called "New Living". Not too long after, the store changed hands and the store was remerchandised and rebranded to the "New Living" concept. Most of the hardware lines were dropped for furniture and mattresses in addition to paint, and in 2014, New Living dismantled the old Wagner Hardware sign above the store. Between 2015 and 2017, New Living refocused from "sustainable design and furniture" to simply "organic mattresses". I'm not sure how the transition between New Living and Houston Natural Mattress (the similar replacement tenant) occurred, but it happened between October 2019 and March 2020. They had different phone numbers. (Street View here).

Pyne Hall Apartments

The Houston Post, March 18 1962
This used to be on Carbon-izer (on Outer Loop Roads). In 1962, Pyne Hall Apartments opened at 2450 McCue Road with 60 units and upscale features (see ad above), and featured an unusual first for apartment complexes, a concrete fallout shelter. By 1980, the apartments had become "Galleria Gardens" and was advertising furnished apartments for executive lodging (rooms equipped with everything, including basic cookware), with daily, weekly, and monthly rates. By 1982, it had adopted the 2500 McCue address, but even as of 1984 still featured yearly leases. At some point in the late 1980s it was seized by the FDIC. (It was still apartments after the seizure in 1988, but ads don't list a name).

In 1994, Residence Inn took over the property (92 units at the time), and made improvements since, notably by rebuilding the structures on the perimeter of the property in the early 2000s. The website now boasts 146 suites as of the late 2010s, and in 2025, changed hands to Extended Stay America.

Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza at Park 10

This now-defunct hotel got back its Crowne Plaza name, if briefly. (Street View, 2011)
Located at 14703 Park Row, the 19-floor 349-room Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza at Park 10 was one of the first Crowne Plaza hotels in the chain (then known as "Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza", I believe it was the fourth after the third, at 2222 W. Loop South, with the first being in Maryland) opening in February 1984. A 1986 article mentions the restaurants here were "Park Cafe" and "Le Regale". In late 1987, however, it was converted to a large (regular) Holiday Inn, "Holiday Inn Houston West". It still was a nice hotel and advertised the "Holidome" as a feature. In 1995 it was rebranded again to "Holiday Inn Select" (a now-defunct brand angled toward business travelers) and by 2008 was rebranded back to Crowne Plaza, as InterContinental Hotel Group had decided to eliminate Holiday Inn Select as a brand.

In 2012 it switched hotel groups entirely, switching to a Wyndham and closed in 2020 permanently, mirroring so many other large hotels that closed over thirty years prior.

Around 2023 it reopened as Teak, a luxury apartment building.

My 2002 directory for Holiday Inn mentions that the hotel had "Tavern at the Park" (bar), Park Cafe (buffets for weekday lunch and breakfast, Friday seafood buffet, and champagne brunch for Sunday).

H-E-B Pantry Foods #309

Not an H-E-B Pantry anymore, unfortunately.
In July 1992, the ribbon-cutting for H-E-B Pantry Foods #309 at 5815 Antoine Drive was held and continued on until around 2003 when the store closed (it's possible, but unlikely, that it became branded as a regular H-E-B by this time).

A few years later, it was expanded and reopened as "Harris County Annex 38", a government building with a variety of services and offices inside. (HHR mentions it was "expanded prior to closing", but this is incorrect, it expanded AFTER closing). The above picture is from Google Maps Street View, a crummy-quality picture of the store when operating as an H-E-B can be seen here.

Originally seen on the Other Houston Roads - Outer Loop and H-E-B Stores of Houston, both on Carbon-izer.

Barbecue Inn

Picture from author, March 2019
With the recent passing of Barbecue Inn (closed the first weekend of August 2026) I wanted to take another look at this post and expand it somewhat. To start off, let's take a look at what Fearless Critics: Houston Restaurant Guide said about this restaurant in 2008 that convinced me to try it.

Click to enlarge. Sorry about the quality, it's not my scan.
When I visited in March 2019 I was happy to see that most of that held true. The fries were good (but best in Houston? Hmmm...) and the chicken fried steak was excellent. And they did have that little thing for the baked potatoes. But at the same time the restaurant seemed largely stuck in the past, and its time was ultimately coming to a close.

Barbecue Inn's closing made the Houston Chronicle (7/31/2026).
Now, it's talked about that it's 80 or so years but how old is it really? Well, Barbecue Inn's current building, according to both HCAD and newspaper records, was built in 1965. As of 1961, the 116 West Crosstimbers address that Barbecue Inn called home for decades was a private residence, with a fire reported in 1961 that damaged the roof, and it's likely that this house, whether repaired or not, was the one that was torn down.

The first reference to Barbecue Inn in the Houston papers appears here in 1931 as a restaurant opening at 242 West Gray. There were references to an "Eddie's Barbecue Inn" in 1942, an "Avalon Barbecue Inn" in 1947, and "Casey's Barbecue Inn" on Market Street in Baytown. Louis & Nell Skrehot opened the restaurant back in 1946, and in 1948 there's a reference to a Barbecue Inn at 4400 Yale, which is the same business, but located across the street where the gas station is currently, but no references to its current address exist prior to 1965, which is what HCAD says. Of course, it's possible that HCAD guessed from the newspaper archives and is just as wrong, but aerials back up the current building not existing prior to 1965, and another similarly-sized (non-residential) building being across the street.

I didn't take any pictures of my meal, unfortunately. (3/2019, by author)
When I originally posted this back in 2020, my Crosstimbers page looks nothing like it does today (and for some reason, as of this update—September 7th, 2026— it somehow is missing the link to the page, which will be fixed by the end of the month.

Jack in the Box in The Heights

Photo by author, March 2019
Built in 1977 but replacing an older restaurant dating back to at least the mid-1960s, this Jack in the Box closed September 2018. The restaurant was poorly run, with employees actually refusing to serve hamburgers after around 7 pm citing the grill being shut off (likely a reason for its demise, as Jack in the Box stores usually thrive on night traffic). After a major renovation inside and out, it reopened as Velvet Taco in January 2021, their third location in Houston at the time but the first with a drive-through. Jack in the Box's "box" signage was kept and reused, however.

UPDATE 08-25-2026: Article touched up for better integration with Carbon-izer

1317 Telephone Road

1317 Telephone Road

When this post was added in early 2019 it simply read "HCAD puts this at being built in 1927, and it has not changed hands since 1992. It likely has been a law office since that time, and no further information is currently available. Photo from author, December 2018."

What we do know is that in the late 1920s it was Cohen's Barber Shop with the other storefront being M.V. Pickett Meat Market. In 1940 one of those storefronts became home of Collins Cleaning and Laundry Service (replacing the meat market as Cohen's continued).

By 1948 the laundromat gave way to Poe & Son Hardware. Following the death of the older Poe in 1959 the establishment became Poe Electric Company in 1963. Meanwhile, that same year, Cohen's Barber Shop closed when Cohen retired after thirty-four years. In 1969, only references for "Myers Business Machines" (calculators, typewriters, etc.) could be found, followed by a similar business (currently unnamed) that added office furniture to the mix by the mid-1970s but the trail ran cold after 1978. Maybe it was abandoned until 1992.

Former Joe's Crab Shack on Northwest Freeway

Picture by author from September 2018, when it was BrickHouse Tavern + Tap.
The restaurant at 12910 Northwest Freeway first opened in 1997 as Joe's Crab Shack, which was a growing chain under parent company Landry's (you can see it in Google Street View as Joe's). After Landry's sold Joe's Crab Shack to investors in 2006, in 2008, the restaurant was closed with other underperforming locations to be converted to a new restaurant concept, BrickHouse Tavern + Tap, with this location being first to open in January 2009. By the picture above was taken, Joe's Crab Shack was back in the possession of Landry's having purchased JCS Holdings (renamed as Ignite Restaurant Group in 2009) in 2017 after Ignite's bankruptcy. Despite surviving the bankruptcy of Ignite and the re-acquisition by Landry's, this particular location was shuttered in March 2022. In early 2023, it reopened as a Cajun-California cuisine restaurant concept called "Cali Kitchen & Bar", though this has since closed around early 2026 (that's when their social media accounts stopped posting); I think I noticed it when their parking lot was empty and all the other restaurants nearby were full (except for the defunct Fuddruckers, of course).

UPDATE 06-26-2026: The most recent update rewrote a good part of the post and renamed it from "Brick House Tavern + Tap (290)". This is part of the changes to help integrate it with Northwest Freeway.

Former Albertsons #2766

In the years since this picture was taken, the logo has been updated with the Albertsons-era "Food" and "Pharmacy" signs removed.
One of the more popular posts¹ on Albertsons Florida Blog (a site I still follow regularly) is their look at Albertsons #4466, located in St. Port Lucie, Florida, which closed in 2012 despite a recently renewed lease and supposed profitability (it's possible that it did well right before the recession, where the PSL area was hit heavily with foreclosures). Well, PSL did have a twin store (more like a multiple birth), #2766, located at 9125 West Sam Houston Parkway North. Unlike #4466, which was mauled for a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, #2766 closed a decade prior but remained remarkably intact under Kroger.

Despite being updated with the same Kroger décor ("Bountiful") that had swept the chain by that time, Kroger #739 as it is numbered now², still held remarkably true to the 4466 layout. It had the same ceiling style and bore enough of a resemblance that I was able to look at the map with my phone and more or less follow it through. I could probably look at the pictures in AFB and visualize the "Grocery Palace" (Albertsons' official name for the package—this is sometimes called "Theme Park", a term Acme Style coined). The Starbucks was in the same place, the deli and meats were in the same place, and while the center store probably saw a rearrangement at some point, there were a few notable changes in the front. The old camera center had been converted to offices with the pet supply area converted to HBA, with the pharmacy next to it (it also added a walk-up pharmacy), and a bank space as well (this may have been part of the original layout), as well as a few other changes. The area around the florist was downsized (didn't see evidence of the former laundromat, though I wasn't looking too hard), as the customer service desk was moved either next to the restrooms or in front of the "Albertsons Reading Center" area. This store opened in 1999 (September 1999, if my notes are right), spending about two and a half years as an Albertsons before being sold to Kroger.

Very Albertsons-like in center store.
This part of town is very Kroger-concentrated due to them purchasing a number of Albertsons locations in town. Just two miles west on West Road is another Kroger (a Kroger Signature built around the turn of the millennium), and at that point, it's where you can find four Kroger stores within a three mile radius, two of which were former Albertsons (the other, of course, is 2790) and two of which were older stores on Northwest Freeway, one of which was a former Safeway/AppleTree. There was a period of about three years when all of these stores operated.

I didn't get a lot of pictures of the store, unfortunately, but the former Albertsons Express is still in business as Kroger's "Kwik Shop", which is run by their convenience store division (a full Kroger-run and Kroger-branded convenience store was opened in College Station in 2016, and that made industry headlines) before they sold off the division, at which point it was run by the supermarket chain thesmselves.

Not a good picture. This was later rebranded as a Kroger convenience store after the division was sold off, but the "Snacks" and "Beverages" signage still stands.
This was the current Street View when this post was originally posted in 2018, with the pictures here taken in summer 2016 by author. It also was an updated version of a 2016 post of Safeway and Albertsons in Texas Blog.

1. In 2016, anyway. I don't have access to recent metrics.
2. In the Houston/Southwest Division of Kroger, #7xx stores were acquired from Albertsons.

UPDATE 07-29-2026: Updated for integration to Carbon-izer with new name (formerly titled as "Kroger #739"). The original post is now almost a decade old.

1344 Yale

1344 Yale Street

This building was a former bakery operation (as of the early 1980s directory, listed as "Heights Bakery" though it's possible it was something originally), with a large three-point sign located at the corner that has faded off completely. As of this writing, the building is scheduled to become a wine bar/shop called "La Grande Rue" and a restaurant called "Savoir". Their websites are (also as of this writing) almost identical. According to HCAD, the build date is 1930 but Loopnet says 1950. However, the building does not seem to be on Google Earth's 1944 view but is on 1953, which suggests 1950 is perhaps the actual build date. More information can be seen on the Houston Architecture Forums.

Picture above is from May 2018 (by the author); picture below from Loopnet before renovations began.

The Commons at Greenspoint

12001-12245 Interstate 45 (North Freeway)

Previously, this content was posted on the Houston Architecture Forums in two posts: "Children's Palace at Greenspoint Commons" and "The Commons at Greenspoint". Built in 1989 right at the time Greenspoint Mall (and the surrounding area) was declining, The Commons at Greenspoint was a modern power center some of the trendy "big box" stores at the time, though many folded by the early 1990s. A listing from the 1990-1991 directory outlined most of the addresses of the stores.

12001 - Media Play (originally built as Phar-Mor)
12009 - Suzannes Shops
12025 - Office Depot
12031 - Sportstown (a chain that went bankrupt in the mid-1990s)
12061 - Highland Superstore (went bankrupt in 1992 and closed all stores by the end of 1993)
12075 - Cloth World (opened 10,000 square foot store in 1990)
12145 - Houston Photolab (this is probably one of the smaller stores)
12159 - Hit or Miss (owned by the parent company of T.J. Maxx, but smaller)
12167 - Sound Warehouse
12175 - Marshalls
12181 - Pier One Imports (stand-alone store close to I-45)
12231 - Marcos Mexican Restaurant
12245 - Children's Palace (see above ad, closed 1992)

Notes from the Chronicle mentioned a few more things:
- Clothestime was here (clothing store), it closed in 1995
- By 1996, Media Play was closed along with other Houston locations ( Almeda Square, Memorial City Mall, Meyer Park Center, Presidio Square and Westchase Center.)
- There was also a store here called Computer City.
- When the center was sold in 1998 to be a telecommunications center, Office Depot was still there.

Greenspoint Technology Center, as it was known from 1999 on, even featured an outpost of Enron and other telecommunications companies but still resembled a strip mall. In 2013, new buildings were built on the parking lot and the property was sealed off from public access.

(Right click to see the image in full size)

UPDATE 06-10-2026: To help integrate this in with Carbon-izer's North Freeway page, the site is now "Digital Realty Houston", a data center.

Randalls Distribution Center

10700 Telge Road

Houston-based Randalls opened a warehouse along Northwest Freeway in 1983, and expanded it in the late 1990s, adding a large traditional warehouse to the south and a freezer addition to the north (the old building had just perishables), consolidating from a location at 3350 Rogerdale Road. This came at about the same time as the chain was purchased by California-based Safeway Inc., which continued to operate the Randalls distribution center as one of two Texas facilities (the other is in the Dallas area, purchased from Food Lion) to serve primarily the Austin and Houston areas.

When Safeway bought Randalls, it was #2 in market share behind Kroger at 20.2%, almost bigger than #3 and #4 held together (Fiesta Mart and H-E-B, respectively).¹ In the years that followed, Safeway made a series of decisions that alienated customers and did not expand the chain, especially as Kroger, H-E-B, and Walmart made aggressive growth. By 2016, about a year after Safeway was acquired by Albertsons, Randalls had fallen to less than 4%, not that Albertsons had much to work with before.

After purchasing Safeway, Albertsons initially reorganized the divisional structure to divide up the "Texas" division, taking Randalls' Tom Thumb chain and combining it with the Dallas-area Albertsons (in the "South" division) while combining Albertsons South's southern Louisiana stores and Florida stores with the Houston division. The Florida stores disconnected as part of a rebranding to Safeway and a realignment with Eastern (until they finally exited the market for good) and in spring 2017, Albertsons gave up on the Houston Division as a separate division (again) and combined it with the South Division, and sold the building.

As of this writing, part of the 1983 building will be demolished (to make the southern 1999 addition a separate building), and three new buildings are to be added under the name "Highland Grove Business Park".

Crossposted from Carbon-izer Presents the Northwest Freeway Corridor.
¹ - `Right' store was ripe for picking - Randalls joins trend with dealHouston Chronicle (TX) (Published as Houston Chronicle) - July 24, 1999
Pictures taken September 2018

1102 Yale

1102 Yale
Because of a plan this site had not to cover the same territory as other sites, it will only add/update to what Arch-ive has already covered.

The most important thing to note is that Arch-ive.org implies it was Ivy-Russell Ford, THEN ABC Food Stores, which it was not.

In 1941, the 1930s-era grocery store here, ABC Food Stores, was absorbed and rebranded by rival Henke & Pillot. In 1955, Henke & Pillot closed and was replaced by Ivy-Russell Ford (which would only make sense seeing as how it was Ivy-Russell, not ABC/Henke's, brand when the siding was peeled off).

In the early 1960s, Ivy-Russell Ford departed and was replaced with Big Bonus Stamp Company (a redemption center for a type of trading stamp) before folding around 1977. For a brief time after that it was the home of F.A. Bogar Furniture (1977-1982) before becoming Eckerd in 1983.

Eckerd remained here until as late as 2004 when the stores were purchased by CVS (CVS did not convert this store).

In 2008, renovations began on the building with the facade (added by Eckerd, or maybe a previous tenant) peeled off. Lola opened in 2009. Additional tenants that arrived by 2011 included Anytime Fitness, Flooring in the Heights, and Nutrition Epicenter. Nutrition Epicenter has closed (Flooring in the Heights has only one mention beyond Street View, and it is also gone). Sharkey's Cuts for Kids has taken over the nutrition store, and it appears Anytime Fitness has expanded into the flooring store. While this site aims to cover full histories of the sites it covers, sometimes that is not feasible with the schedule. Photo taken by author, August 1, 2018.

Sound Fitness

12600 FM 1960 West

Built as part of a redevelopment of the former John Eagle Honda location, this was an Eckerd drug store, and opened in late 2003 or early 2004 (the building was built in 2003 as per HCAD records), and one of the last stores to be built as an Eckerd. However, the building was built at the wrong time. By the time it opened, Eckerd's owner, J.C. Penney, was about to divest the chain to competitors, the finalists being Jean Coutu Group, which operated primarily Canadian drug stores but had a U.S. division in the form of Brooks Pharmacy (in the New England area), and CVS Corporation, which had recently entered the Houston market, and had a store by February 2004 less than a mile away at Fallbrook and FM 1960. In mid-2004, Eckerd was sold. The stores in Houston and much of the South were sold to CVS Corporation, and the stores in the Eastern Seaboard were sold to Jean Coutu Group, which merged them with the Brooks Pharmacy group to create Brooks Eckerd Pharmacy. Initially both chains ran the Eckerd stores under the Eckerd name, but in September 2004, CVS announced it would shut down "at least 50" Eckerd stores in Texas, with the rest becoming CVS stores. (Brooks Eckerd would continue to run the stores as Eckerd until 2007, when Jean Coutu Group sold the division to Rite Aid). The store at FM 1960 and Eldridge (officially 12620 W. FM 1960 as per HCAD) changed hands in mid-2004 to Anthony G Jr. Mancuso Trust, associated with CVS, and it is likely that the store had never become a CVS, as CVS changed out the oval-shaped Eckerd signs in favor a traditional rectangle, and aerial images indicate that by spring of 2005, the virtually-new Eckerd was empty. At an unknown point later (sometime before December 2007), Sound Fitness moved in, but it has been vacant for the last few years (it was definitely closed as of January 2017, and the last time it was known to be open was in 2013). In 2017, the trust divested the property. Picture above was from the author, January 2015.

To update the above, on Carbon-izer (the FM 1960 West page), more on this building and its adjacent stores were described: This three-building strip center is a little hard to explain in writing. The first incarnation of the property was John Eagle Honda (12602 FM 1960 Road West) from approximately 1984 to 2003. After it moved, two buildings were developed, a strip center at 10311 North Eldridge Parkway, and an Eckerd at 12600 FM 1960 West. Unfortunately, the Eckerd closed in 2004 (operating for less than six months, as it was too close to existing CVS stores when Eckerd was dismantled). Eckerd was replaced by Sound Fitness, which operated from around 2006 to 2013. After closing, the sign of Sound Fitness remained up for several years afterward.

The third incarnation of the property renovated both buildings, and rebranded the former Eckerd/Sound Fitness building as 12620 FM 1960 (Building C) while adding an all-new Building A with the same address. (Presumably, the Eldridge building is "B"). Building C now has Walgreens (which relocated from their larger store catty-corner), Vision Concept, a vacant space, and Charleys Cheesesteaks. Building A features Candila Media Graphics (for a graphic company, the font is awful, the "a"s look like "o"s), The UPS Store, Avis/Budget, Verizon, and Tex Mex Grill & Bar.

It also links to the Houston Historic Retail which discusses the building after it had been modified around the early 2020s. Current Google Maps Street View

Holiday Inn - Greenway Plaza

2712 Southwest Freeway

According to both HCAD and Emporis, this hotel opened in 1984, certainly by May 1984 when this advertisement was published, advertising the hotel's bar/nightclub, The White Rose Cabaret. While the hotel wasn't quite as tall as the Holiday Inn Downtown (no Holiday Inn was), it was probably fancier and would be in better shape (even as the oil downturn hit).

In August 1994, just about two years after a renovation, it was reported that Holiday Inn Greenway Plaza was being sold to Dallas-based Harvey Hotels Corporation (this is all cross-referenced with HCAD), and the Holiday Inn sign was removed, replaced with the Harvey Hotel branding (and it was branded as Harvey Hotel for a while, with references to the hotel being named as such as of May 1995).

Prior to this, the hotel had flipped hands several times back and forth from Greenway Plaza Inn Inc. to other companies, none lasting more than two years (so says HCAD), but keeping the Holiday Inn name. Despite some articles of Harvey Hotel rebranding some acquired Holiday Inn hotels to its own name, Harvey Hotels began a restructuring, and in late 1995, became Bristol Hotel Company. By March 1996 (the earliest reference found), Harvey Hotel had returned to the Holiday Inn branding, but as Holiday Inn Select, a brand of Holiday Inn Worldwide (owned at the time by Bass PLC, not to be confused with the Bass family out of Fort Worth). While research was unable to find when Holiday Inn Select was created, it looks like 1995, and the Houston hotel may have been one of the very first to get rebranded, even under the Harvey Hotels ownership. Meanwhile, Bristol continued to be a major Holiday Inn franchisee, which took control of a number of formerly company-owned locations in 1997 (for some reason, transfer of the title of the title officially to Bristol Lodging was not official until October 1997).

While the Harvey Hotel name did not last long on the hotel, Harvey/Bristol would have Holiday Inn Select for over a decade until Holiday Inn Select Houston - Greenway Plaza Area (as it was known by this time) would remain until ASDN Houston (from what it looks like, only owned that hotel) bought it in 2006. That being true, it meant that the hotel was briefly owned by Holiday Inn's parent company itself, as Bristol was purchased in 2000 by Bass, shortly before Bass sold their flagship brewing business to Interbrew in 2000 (becoming Six Continents, reflecting the holdings of the worldwide hotel company) and spinning off the pubs and restaurants division as Mitchell & Butlers in 2003, becoming InterContinental Hotels Group. Soon after ASDN purchased Holiday Inn Select, IHG announced a redesign of the Holiday Inn name, which included (among other things), discontinuing the Holiday Inn Select and Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort names. The Holiday Inn Select hotels would be phased out for either traditional Holiday Inn hotels or Crowne Plaza, and by the end of 2011, this hotel would become Crowne Plaza Houston River Oaks. (There was one other Holiday Inn Select in the Houston area, at 14703 Park Row, though today it is a Wyndham).

The 2002 Six Continents hotel directory reports that the Holiday Inn Select (which is what the author remembers as the building during his trips to Houston prior to 2010) featured 355 "executive guest rooms" and 36 suites, plus 18 floors, 12,000 square foot of meeting space (up to 500 to 800 people depending on configuration), and a "Restaurant & Bar".

Google Street View from the present to the days when it was Holiday Inn Select

UPDATE 05-25-2026: Minor changes to match with Carbon-izer.

Tejas Materials Inc.

1902 Weber Street

This facility was built in 1948 for Ceco Steel Products Corporation, which relocated from 2814 Pease (the old facility was sold to adjacent to Markle Steel), housing an office, fabrication plant, and warehouse. When Ceco closed the facility is unknown, but in the late 1980s it was leased to Gypsum Management & Supply, which changed names to Tejas Distribution Company, and eventually Tejas Materials Inc., which bought the facility outright from Ceco-Robertson (merger from 1990) in 1993.

Originally, there was a storage yard out back accessible through an extension of Silver Street, but reconfigurations from highway construction would mean that Silver Street was truncated past Weber, and the space to the east of the warehouse used instead. Of interest is an abandoned spur that was cut off in the early 1990s (or even 1980s), connecting to the Katy line and cutting between the buildings owned by Martin Preferred Foods to the south. You can see that some rails still remain just beyond the repaving of the road, with the original Weber surface buried about four inches or so below the current pavement.