Author: Anonymous in Houston

Here’s another look at the power alley, but this time we see the Bakery as well. Note that even with the compact installation of Bountiful, the power alley does still have some of Bountiful’s ‘basket’ signs. Also note the checkerboard flooring tiles. Some of those bakery display carts would have been replaced with tables and chairs back when this store was new and still had the fast food food court.

Powerful Kroger Signature Stores Gain A Power Alley

11 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike In last month’s The Year of Kroger entry, we explored a very early Kroger Signature store built in 1993, the Cypress Station store. In this month’s The Year of Kroger post, we will explore another early Kroger Signature store, Kroger HO-311, the Jersey Village/Steeplechase store located at the intersection of Jones Road & West …

Read more
By 1993’s standards, this would have seemed like a very large supermarket!

A Sign of the Future: Kroger’s Dominating Signature Format Turns 30

4 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike In last month’s The Year of Kroger installment, we took a look at a north Houston suburban Kroger, the Kroger on Veterans Memorial. This month’s installment of The Year of Kroger will keep us in the north Houston suburbs and the general FM 1960 corridor. In this edition of The Year of Kroger, we …

Read more
Here is a more distant view of the store. As one can see here, this store does do a fair amount of business. One can also tell from here that the parking lot is not in the best condition these days.

A Warm Greenhouse Welcome to the Year of Kroger here at HHR!

10 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos taken by Mike Happy New Year and welcome to 2023, Houston Historic Retail readers! We have many interesting things planned for this year. One of our goals for the year is to cover some of the most interesting Kroger stores in the Houston area. With that in mind, we plan on posting one Kroger post a month …

Read more
Here is a drawing of Houston’s newest ‘mall’ in 1971! The Bellaire Texan via The Portal to Texas History, July 7, 1971

Vintage Ads: Celebrating the 1971 Grand Opening of Braeswood Square

15 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston This edition of Vintage Ads will take us back to the grand opening of the Braeswood Square shopping center near Bellaire in Southwest Houston. Braeswood Square’s grand opening was on July 8, 1971 and we’ll be looking at various ads from the July 7, 1971 edition of The Bellaire Texan newspaper which is freely available to read at The Portal …

Read more
Here's a sign in the mall advertising the Mainland City Centre redevelopment.

Redevelopment of the Mall of the Mainland continues in 2022

5 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos being taken by Mike. The topic of today’s post takes us back to Galveston County for a quick update about a bit of a Houston-area retail comeback story. The Mall of the Mainland in Texas City, TX has long stood for failure and broken dreams. While plenty of malls around the United States, and Houston for that …

Read more
Without even stepping inside this Randall's, we can tell that it appeals to shoppers who like colorful, classic things!

South Shore Harbour Randalls Gets A Colorful Remodel

5 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos being taken by Mike. Also, Mike will be the featured speaker tonight at 7 pm (10/5) for the Houston Preservation Society. Click Here to live stream the broadcast! The subject of today’s post here at Houston Historic Retail is something of an oddity here in the 2020s, a suburban Houston-area Randall’s store that appears to be doing …

Read more
When this store opened, it had a gable front facade. Safeway gave the front of this store a more traditional look in the early 2000s.

North Houston’s Remarkable Handy Randalls in Champions

4 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston with the photos being taken by Mike For close to 50 years, the supermarket featured in this blog post has been one of, if not the, most upscale supermarkets in all of the northern half of Houston. With that in mind, it’s fair to say that this supermarket is truly remarkable! This remarkable store, the Randall’s Flagship store at 5219 …

Read more
This large sign greeted Houston Jewelry shoppers at their catalog showroom at 9633 Westheimer. (Photo: Houston Jewelry's Facebook Page)

A Look Back at Houston Jewelry, Houston’s Own Catalog Showroom Store

12 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Usually when Mike or I start researching a potential blog post here at Houston Historic Retail, we have to dig deep into historical archives to find useful historical information to present here on the blog. This blog post is quite unique in that the subject, Houston Jewelry & Distributing, is a company which has embraced their history and they have …

Read more

Vintage Ads: Finding Bargains at North Oaks Mall and Elsewhere in 1989

No comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Longtime readers here at Houston Historic Retail might remember our Vintage Ads series of posts. It’s been a while since we’ve posted a new Vintage Ads post so it seems like a good time to make a new installment in the series. This installment of the series will look at retail ads from the August 16, 1989 issue of the …

Read more
Welcome to Tomball in 1965! (Captured from the Texas Archive of the Moving Image)

A Tour of Tomball Retail in 2000 and 1965

2 comments

Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Loyal Houston Historic Retail readers may recall that a few weeks ago, we published a blog post showing screenshots from a YouTube video published by Dan Starr and filmed by his wife Amy that showed Tomball’s retail scene in the year 1998. Well, Dan has come through once again as he recently uploaded some video footage taken by Amy and …

Read more