Howdy folks, and for the last time in 2022, welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! It’s been a heck of a year, 144 blog posts, 6 new blog pages, and in my personal life, a Master’s Degree completed! That being said, before we review some of my favorite things from this past year, let me ask that if you feel like you got any value out of Houston Historic Retail, please consider making a donation. …
Read moreTag: CVS
CVS to close this former Westheimer Eckerd, tomorrow
Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! Today we’re taking a look at a closing CVS that started out as one of the final Houston Eckerd locations. Located at 9292 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77063, the current location dates all the way back to about 1975. The original Eckerd was co-located with a Safeway at 9523 Westheimer Rd, Houston, TX 77063. Safeway’s first batches of stores included agreements to build locations with Eckerd …
Read moreHeadline News: Houston’s newest CVS moves into old Houston Post Building!
Houstonians of a certain age, remember when the city had more than one daily newspaper. Up until 1995, The Houston Post was the Chronicle’s last direct competitor before being dismantled as part of the slow decline of print media. It was often a dividing line to declare yourself as a Chronicle family or a Post family. The Post was considered to be more conservative, and the Chronicle more progressive, a division that went all the …
Read moreSpeckerd’s Part Two, Fun Size Bottles
Howdy folks, and Happy New Year’s Eve! In celebration of what you’ll likely be doing tonight, let’s take a look at a place where you can pop-corks. Houston’s, most prominent liquor store chain, Spec’s. We will again be taking a look at a Spec’s that is housed in a former Eckerd, making this part two of Speckerd’s! In our last episode, we discussed how overbuilding in Houston hurt area drug stores, leading to some stores …
Read moreSpEckerd either way you’ve gotta show ID to buy stuff!
Houston has a preponderance of former drug stores. Many have found new uses, and seemingly just as many continue to sit vacant. The vast majority of these failed pharmacies come from overbuilding over the past 20 or so years. The issue wasn’t specific to Houston, as evident by the recently announced CVS closures, but it sure had an early start here. Most of it began around 2003 when CVS entered the Houston market, their desire …
Read moreMy Summer Vacation: A CVS on the Riverwalk
In 1993 Eckerd opened a new drug store at 211 Loyosa San Antonio, with an entrance on the Riverwalk, this location is now arguable “One of the best known CVS locations in Texas”. With the CVS acquisition of Eckerd in Texas (and a few other places), the store changed names and continues to operate as a bit of an oddity. Let’s start off with the history of the building. Built sometime in the mid 1800s, …
Read moreRandom Retail: Two out of place Big Box Retailers, and Two former Burger Joints
Welcome folks, today we’ve got another edition of Random Retail! This week we have a heavy emphasis on a former Wal-Mart, but not enough that it warrants its own post. If you’ve never experienced Random Retail before, well it’s basically a dump of photos I’ve taken that don’t really fit in with anything else I’m doing at the moment. A good portion of these Random Retail photos come from former Wal-Mart #597 at 7075 FM …
Read moreThrough the Annals: A Guide to Retail History in Annual Reports
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is a guest submission from HHR’s good friend Anonymous in Houston Researching the operations of a publicly traded company here in the 21st century is most certainly not a very difficult thing. After all, there are numerous reports about companies available through their own websites and through various websites that can all be accessed very quickly. However, those who were around before the rise of the World Wide Web might remember …
Read moreCVS abandons an Eckerd’s concept
Welcome back loyal reader in this week’s post we’re talking about a CVS location that started out life as Eckerd. Most Houstonians can recall when Eckerd went away and CVS debuted in Houston. Many within our fair city thought that this was a long planned transition and a national phasing out of the chain. It at least seemed that way from the customer point of view. Based on the statements CVS was making it seemed …
Read moreQue mas is CVS y más? | What more is CVS y mas?
If you’re at all like me then you’re a person who pays attention to the city’s “signscape”. A littered mess of stylish corporate identities mixed side by side with generic bold letter text. Many signs around Houston are in foreign languages, you can easily find them in Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, and most often Spanish. An interesting addition to our signscape is CVS y más. Literally it means CVS and more, and the differences aren’t …
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