Tag: memorial

A tour of Weingarten’s in 1969 at Rummel Creek

The Rummel Creek Weingarten's in 1973

Howdy folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail. Today we’re setting the time machine to 1968 to take a look at the brand-new Rummel Creek Weingarten’s. A store we’ve seen before on HHR, but never in its original form. Before we go any further, I need to shout out Pleasant Family Shopping, who was able to hook me up with these photos and a few others already on HHR. If you haven’t already followed him on Facebook, be sure to! All of the following text and images are from the 1968 J. Weingarten Inc. Annual Report: Climbing on the bandwagon …

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Handy Randalls, the store that killed an HEB still here 50 years later

Howdy, folks, and welcome back to Houston Historic Retail! Today we’re taking an in-depth look at one of Houston’s former Handy Andy stores. If you’re not in the know about Handy Andy, let me give you a little background. They were a grocer based out of San Antonio who expanded to Houston in the 1970s. During the initial phases of their expansion, things went quite well with the Becker family, who owned the stores, building four large-format stores unlike anything else they’d ever built. These new stores were much larger than an average grocery store of the time, had a …

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Houston’s oldest TJ Maxx is in a former Weingartens

One more look at the building with the trees, you almost don't feel like you're in Houston.

Rummel Creek Village is a very interesting shopping center. With wooden shingles, ample trees, and vintage facade, you almost feel closer to the Hill Country than Houston here. Despite fitting stylistically with the surrounding Memorial Villages area, Rummel Creek Village is actually entirely within Houston. It’s anyone’s guess as to how it has survived unchanged for so long, but thankfully with age the design has only gained charm. It almost looks like something that would have never been built in Houston, due to our tendency to stick with very drab and plain and largely stucco shopping centers. This is at …

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