Burger King at 7406 Fondren Road

Picture from Google Maps (Ryan Smith, 2016)
This particular Burger King at 7406 Fondren Road operated from 1988 to around early 2024 and demolished within a year or so. I removed this entry from Carbon-izer's Southwest Freeway page a while back (or did it even make it to the Southwest Freeway page?) and that's why it's reappearing on The Houston Files, plus I ate here, back in 1999, with my parents when we were visiting this part of town. I was going to write that there was some sort of Muppets from Space promotion going on at the time but further evidence shows that Wendy's did this promotion, but it was definitely Burger King and definitely this Burger King, because it was in a commercial area closer to the highway, whereas Wendy's was a block or two in the opposite direction and faced houses.

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.

290 / Beltway 8 Demolition - Taco Bell

15950 Northwest Freeway

This is the third of at least three posts on a small collection of fast food restaurants which the author has taken a personal interest in, to be further explored in a future post on the Northwest Freeway site (this link will be updated soon to reflect that). Along with McDonald's and Wendy's, a Taco Bell was also among the three fast food sites and others on the south side of Highway 290 to be leveled for road widening. According to HCAD, the Taco Bell was built in 1993 and had red, green, and yellow striping outside. Like the other restaurants it closed around fall 2012, and was demolished within months of when these pictures were taken in March 2013 by the author. (The above photo is one of the only ones I have of the building, and the photo below shows the back of the restaurant). Previously, these photos appeared on Carbon-izer and Brazos Buildings & Businesses.

Street View of Taco Bell still in operation

Former Kroger #174

641 West Crosstimbers Road This former Kroger (#174 in the Houston division) store was built in 1979, likely built as a grocery companion to the now-defunct 1950s-era Sears store next door (much like how the Midtown Fiesta Mart was built), and it connected with its parking lot. It is an unusual building that doesn't quite match with Kroger prototypes (similar to the "Superstore" designs but with significant modifications), likely to fit into lot requirements.

In 1982 it closed due to union problems. After a short run as Rainbow Home Town Foods around 1984-1985 (part of a short-lived affiliation of stores run by the now-defunct Schepp's Grocery), Kroger continued to own the empty store but it remained empty until it was sold to Charles Bertani, who moved his "Family Bingo Center" here in 1999 from its old location at 1275 Pinemont.

In October 2021, Family Bingo Center shuttered without much notice despite owning the facility, and demolition plans for the building were filed soon after. In its place is being built Modera Garden Oaks, ready for move-in late 2023. The two pictures are the author's, taken July 2018, but a day apart.

UPDATE 07-08-2026: As of July 2026, Modera Garden Oaks is now known as The Brighton Garden Oaks. It looks like it might've changed hands in mid-2025. The above link for Modera Garden Oaks has been replaced with an an archived version.
UPDATE 07-29-2026: Renamed post to "Former Kroger #174" as part of updates and integration into Carbon-izer.