Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Sarah Kidd St Julien in January 2009
Greetings, it has been a while since I have published a guest blog post here at Houston Historic Retail. The last post I published here was about a Houston area Kroger, the FM 1960 W & N. Eldridge Grocery Palace Krogertsons to be exact, and anyone familiar with my previous work here at HHR will surely remember The Year of Kroger project I was heavily involved in here at HHR in 2023. While 2023 might have been The Year of Kroger here at HHR, 2025 has been the year of Kroger closures around the Houston area. In fact, the most recent closing victim was the first The Year of Kroger entry, the Veterans Memorial Kroger.
The closure of the Veterans Memorial Kroger was a loss for me as it is one of the Kroger stores in my general area and it was the most convenient place to truly take in a 1980s Kroger Greenhouse experience. That said, Kroger Greenhouse fans, and we know there are many of you in the HHR readership, still have other relatively untouched Kroger Greenhouse exteriors in the Houston area to visit. The subject of today’s post, Kroger HP-337 located at 2619 Red Bluff Rd, Pasadena, TX 77506, is one of those Kroger Greenhouse stores.
Kroger HP-337 opened in 1983 as a Greenhouse combination store with an in-store pharmacy. Interestingly enough, while far from a dual Greenhouse, the neighboring store in the shopping center has somewhat of a Greenhouse-style look to it. I can’t say for sure, but it is possible that Kroger initially envisioned the neighboring spot to be a SupeRx pharmacy store, but Kroger closed their Houston-area SupeRx stores in 1981 so perhaps that plan was scrapped somewhere along the way. The history of the neighboring spot prior to 1991 is a bit of a mystery to me, but it might have briefly served as a McCrory store in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hopefully our readers can fill in some of the details.
In 1991, Eckerd moved their location from the neighboring Market Center Shopping Center mall, one of the many small air-conditioned malls anchored by Weingarten’s which once dotted the Houston-area, to the spot neighboring Kroger HP-337. The Market Center Shopping Center Eckerd had a long history. It was an original tenant at the mall in 1959 as the Dugan Drug Store. By 1969, Dugan Drug had become Mading-Dugan Drug Stores before the Mading-Dugan chain was sold to Eckerd in 1970. The Market Center Shopping Center Mading-Dugan caught on fire on February 5, 1969, and was rebuilt and reopened by June 4, 1969. Mading-Dugan operated a temporary store in a metal building in the parking lot while the rebuild occurred. The Eckerd next to the Kroger survived the CVS buyout of Eckerd’s Texas locations in 2004, but the store was only briefly a CVS as it was closed in 2005. Eventually, the store’s current tenant, Family Dollar, took over the space.
HHR reader Sarah Kidd St Julien submitted photos of the former Eckerd and of Kroger HP-337 taken in January 2009. We certainly thank Sarah Kidd St Julien for these great photos! The photos show the Kroger with Kroger’s memorable, for better or for worse, Millennium décor package which the store carried in between the Bauhaus décor package era and the Bountiful décor package era. Those who shopped at Kroger in the Y2K era will surely remember the Millennium décor package, but for those who need a refresher, Retail Retell of the Mid-South Retail Blog has a great blog post covering the details of the Kroger Millennium décor package.
The Kroger Millennium package debuted at a time where supermarket décor packages were becoming less formal and glitzy, as they were during the Kroger Neon décor era, and more whimsical and theme park-like. Perhaps the definition of whimsical supermarket décor from the Y2K era was Albertsons’ Grocery Palace décor package. Kroger’s Millennium décor certainly is not as radical as Grocery Palace and, thus, it has never held the same regard in retail enthusiast circles. That said, when evaluating Millennium compared to other older and newer Kroger packages, it is easy to see the whimsical nature of Millennium which made shopping more of a fun, family-oriented experience. After all, Millennium integrates Comic Sans in the décor package via the aisle markers! Bauhaus fans surely cringed at that! Kroger Millennium was the décor package Kroger stores carried during some of their best years in Houston market in the late 1990s and early 2000s, a period before the ascent of HEB’s full-line stores and where Kroger helped lead the partial demise of Randall’s and the full demise of Albertsons in the Houston market.
While it is harder to make out the décor on the Eckerd side of things, there are still elements of the classic 1990s Eckerd décor visible in the photos such as the pink and neon cosmetics department. It is hard to believe this space did not originally start out as an Eckerd given the classic 1980s Eckerd look of the front windows and doors!
We want to thank Sarah Kidd St Julien again for sharing these wonderful photos from 2009 with us. If you are sitting on any similar type of retail photos, Mike would love to hear from you! If you have any comments about the Red Bluff Kroger, Eckerd, or any of the other topics discussed in this post, please feel free to leave a comment below! We love to hear from our readers!
Wow, great flashback pictures! It is wild how 2009 looks so long ago, when it doesn’t sound like it is (although I guess it’s starting to feel like it is… and hopefully the distinction between all three of those words makes sense, lol). Thanks for the links to my blog posts, too!
Perhaps my favorite part of these pictures is seeing the original font on the aisle markers, as while the décor survived into more modern times in other locations, those placards were typically replaced with newer ones featuring the bountiful décor font. Are you sure the millennium font is comic sans? I was always under the impression it was something different. I feel like I’ve seen someone identify it before, but of course I have no idea where. I do know that the font used in some of the wall signage (not the cursive-like one, but the other) is used by Love’s truck stop in their branding!
Since neither l_dawg2000 nor I have shared any updates on it lately, it’s probably worth mentioning what is perhaps the most internet-famous greenhouse Kroger, the store on Stateline Road in Southaven. A year or two ago they removed the old, original stained glass Barney’s Cafe sign as part of a larger project to wall off the former cafe seating space and turn it into a Pickup staging area. Now, the store is currently undergoing facade work to cover up the greenhouse. While it is good to see the store finally getting attention, hopefully speaking to business volume and also potentially part of the city’s overall work to revitalize that area, it’s certainly sad to see the greenhouse be hidden, especially given the standard new Kroger facade it will be getting which I personally find rather ugly. Granted, the remix décor currently inside the store is also ugly; hopefully a remodel will follow!
2009 doesn’t seem like all that long ago to me, but I suppose some others would think otherwise. Someone born that year would probably be graduating from high school soon! That said, 2009 does seem like a long time ago in the world of Kroger, or at least in the Houston world of Kroger. In 2009, Kroger was still the top dog around town and the definition of a supermarket in Houston. By 2019, and probably a few years before that even, that had changed significantly with HEB becoming the dominant player for much of Houston.
Of course, a lot of this is because Kroger has really let themselves go, and that’s not just a Houston thing. It’s amazing how much stuff Kroger stuffed into this Greenhouse store in 2009, much of it is well outside the world of food and drug products. It’s also funny that in 2009, Kroger in many ways seemed to think Food Town was their biggest threat rather than HEB. Of course, there was a time in the HEB Pantry Foods era where HEB was getting killed on sales per square ft. by Food Town in Houston. That was around a decade before 2009 even, but that goes to show much things change because Food Town is only a marginal player now, even more marginal than Kroger even.
Those aisle markers might not be Comic Sans exactly, but it looks like a pretty close substitute if nothing else. It certainly makes me think of Comic Sans at least!
The Stateline Road Southaven Kroger was the talk of Flickr for quite a while, even managing to compete with the load of Kmart photos back then, lol. That’s unfortunate to hear that the Greenhouse aspect of it is gone now. We’ve had some similar renovations around Houston as well, the Seabrook Greenhouse (well, kind of) Kroger comes to mind. You can see by going back in time how much this one has changed: https://maps.app.goo.gl/dt4U7gBDd67nrzsx8
Fortunately, the Red Bluff Kroger still has the Greenhouse and it hasn’t shown up on any closing lists yet. We’ll see, but for sure the local Greenhouse fans should check it out because who knows how long it’ll last in the form it is in now even if the Millennium decor is long gone now.
Kroger 337 did in fact open in 1983. It was in fact a Greenhouse store. But, it was located in the Spring Woodlands area at 295 Sawdust Road Spring , Texas 77380. I know because I was there. It was open until like around 2008 or 2009 when it was replaced by Kroger 373 in 2007 at 2301 Rayford Road Spring, Texas 77386.
Thanks for the comment, Anonymous. The Kroger on 295 Sawdust Road did indeed open two months after the Red Bluff store, but it was numbered Kroger HP-339. The Red Bluff store is indeed HP-337. In case your wondering, there was a Kroger HP-338 in Porter, TX, but it didn’t open until 1985.