Past Lives of Harvey Washbanger's

Better days at Mazzio's. Note the College Station location didn't offer delivery.
Located at 1802 Texas Avenue South, Harvey Washbanger's has only changed out the machines and its logo (the food, however, is less consistent) has been here since 1998.

At this point, 1998 is a long time ago; there's not too many restaurants (or stores for that matter) that have been around for that long. None of the grocery stores that were here in 1998 are here anymore (all closed or relocated) and many other restaurants have come and gone in that period. Like any long-running restaurant, it has a good gimmick. La Tour d'Argent has its "duck cards" since 1890 (now at a number approaching 1.2 million) while The Big Texan Steak Ranch has its "72 ounce steak challenge" (with a bread roll, a baked potato, shrimp cocktail, and a side salad) that has taken on many challengers over the years...while Harvey Washbangers has a laundromat.

Harvey Washbanger's was not the first restaurant here, however (as is often the case). Before even Mazzio's, we need to go back to 1975 with the opening of the Kashim Club, which might have been College Station's first black-owned business by Bennie Smedley. While initially a bar and meeting place, by late 1976 it had lunch every weekday with table service. A 1978 blurb mentioned Kashim featured "sandwiches, mixed drinks, and disco music".

In the early 1980s, Kashim closed and soon gave way to a redevelopment of the lot, which affected adjacent spot 1800 Texas Avenue South (former spot of Pepper's, a hamburger restaurant concept by the Ken Martin group...more on that another time) as well. 1802 Texas Avenue South would remain a restaurant, with Mazzio's Pizza opening in 1987. Mazzio's would bow out by the end of 1997, and in 1998, Harvey Washbanger's opened, a restaurant that featured wings, hamburgers, and other bar food-type items while also a being a full-service laundromat. With a system of lighted indicators visible from the main restaurant area ("Drink 'till your lights go out" was a common joke there), Harvey Washbanger's turned out to be a surprising success and stayed around for a very long time. The menu has changed due to various changes in kitchen management, sometimes big menus, sometimes smaller ones. In 2018, the restaurant celebrated twenty years in business, a feat that few local restaurants could brag. A few years later their logo/signage changed. While it has more distinction than their old one, it's just a backlit sign rather than neon-outlined signage.

Editor's Note: I've been going through and reworking the [defunct] and [demolished] tags. [demolished] indicates that the subject of the building was torn down at some point even if it something has been rebuilt and is a permanent addition, [defunct] indicates that the space is currently unused for anything.

Western National Bank of Bryan

When the bank at Villa Maria and Forestwood opened in 1982, there was not only a full page ad here but a full section of advertisement articles and other stuff. From The Eagle, I just cleaned it up a bit. Western National Bank (not to be confused with others sharing the name--there was another one in Abbeville, Louisiana) was established in 1981 as a bank based out of Bryan, funded by local investors with the office and only branch to be at Forestwood Drive and West Villa Maria Road in Bryan (1001 W. Villa Maria Road), and opening in November 1982. However, by 1987, with banks failing across the state (in part due to the oil crash, in part the S&L crisis), Western, now in deep financial trouble, proposed merging with United Citizens Bank, a local bank operation that was formed after local bank UnitedBank bought the insolvent Citizens Bank of Bryan.

The combined bank would be headquartered at the Western National Bank site, with the site anticipated to be a more happening part of town with the construction of what would be State Highway 47. In October 1987, however, Western National Bank was declared insolvent by the FDIC but quickly reopened a day later as "Villa Maria Bank", a branch of First State Bank of Caldwell (which paid the FDIC $5000 to acquire the accounts) and in November 1987 Villa Maria Bank officially opened after its soft reopening a few weeks prior, just five years after Western National Bank opened. By 1990, First State Bank also had a branch off Harvey Road under its own name (at 701 Harvey Road) and Villa Maria Bank soon changed names to be more like its parent company. While the bank always had a metal roof from day one, at some point during First State Bank's ownership (by 1995), the bank received a small addition to the right side of the building (on the western part).

In 1996, First State Bank was acquired by First American Bank, which used to be called UnitedBank (guess that merger came through after all). Like other First American Bank branches (which we have previously covered) it was converted to Citibank in 2005 after another merger, sold to BB&T in 2014, and converted to Truist after BB&T after they merged in 2022. Except, they didn't, as BB&T closed this branch sometime around 2018. Prior to or during renovations into office space, in late May 2019, a fire burned through the building, creating visible damage on the outside and causing a partial roof collapse. As a result, the building was simply torn down (along with its parking lots) and not replaced.

A "gas station/deli" has been promised per the sign out front but nothing yet, and who knows what that entails (the lot's big enough for a decent gas station, maybe TXB or perhaps we may be lucky and get a QuikTrip...or just a decent fast food co-brand). In any case, one of the things that stuck out to me was how UnitedBank believed that the western part of Bryan would be a bigger thing than it was. Even though State Highway 47 was complete by the late 1990s it still took a long time for that to get anywhere off the ground. Even in much of the 2000s that was still largely open territory and mostly industrial, even when Traditions was starting to build up. (Then again, a lot of the Traditions stuff never really panned out either).

Original Location of McCoy's

From The Eagle (2000), source described below.
Pretty much every post in the last twelve months has been a restaurant of some sort and the last three, seafood restaurant, University Drive East restaurant, seafood restaurant ON University Drive...it's put me in a mood to find something that is not, in fact, a restaurant, but something I could work with. An idea came up to do Texas Hall of Fame, but to cover that would be covering Rudder's Landing, which would have, you guessed it, restaurants. The challenge was no restaurants, nothing on Texas Avenue (there's been a LOT of that).

After thinking about it for a few minutes, I came up with an answer. The original McCoy's Building Supply location! Now, it still exists at Boonville Road where it has been since the mid-1990s or so, but the location just south of Briarcrest is what I remember from the early days. Open from 1983 to mid-1996 when it moved (probably one of my earliest "closed store" memories, after Kmart and Winn-Dixie, but before Piknik Pantry with its Chinese food.

In 1997, Office Furniture USA opened. This new and used office furniture store was initially part of local company Engineering and Office Supply. In 2000, this was purchased by Wilton's OfficeWorks. I'm not sure what the original sign said, there were articles from 1997 about it being called Office Furniture USA but in 2000 a new sign was installed that would be the main facade for the next thirteen years. Apparently, part of the lumberyard area McCoy's used to use is/was subleased as RV and boat storage but I can't confirm that.

The current address is 141 N. Earl Rudder Freeway, the pre-1999 address was 3220 S. East Bypass.

Rockfish Seafood Grill

Regrettably we'll have to go with Street View on this one today, and the replacement building at that.
Having added both new and retroactively a new tag for posts, "Death by Fire" covering the likes of Sunset Gardens, Olive Garden, Krispy Kreme, and a few others, there's another addition to that, Rockfish Seafood Grill. Rockfish technically didn't close because of fire, but it did burn down.

In any case, Rockfish Seafood Grill opened in December 2001 at 1611 University Drive East as the tenth restaurant in the Dallas-based chain. There wasn't an official review for the restaurant, only a blurb about its opening, though a now-defunct website gave a review as an advertisement. (That would be a good strategy for this site....if The Eagle wasn't virtually defunct). In the summer of 2005, Rockfish closed and was quickly sold to the franchisee of Cheddar's Casual Cafe next door to open as Fish Daddy's Grill House, a new seafood concept owned by the corporate parent of Cheddar's, which had two other locations.

During renovations, the building caught fire and was instead torn down to the foundation and rebuilt, opening sometime around spring 2006. Since then, Fish Daddy's disconnected from the Cheddar's chain (probably around the time they were bought by Darden); the Austin location became "FD's Grill House" and Tulsa's location has a substantially different menu than the College Station location.

Editor's Note: In addition to the newer articles, several older articles have gotten significant updates. Check out Ardan Catalog Showroom / Rolling Thunder / Gattiland / Thunder Elite / Planet Fitness, Putt-Putt Golf & Games, and Former Taco Cabana.

Long John Silver's in Bryan

Long John Silver's, before it walked the plank. (September 2024, photo by author).
Bryan's Long John Silver's was closed and demolished in late 2024 following its condemnation, despite some new permits being filed. Based on the fact the signage remains up but empty (no "temporarily closed"), no fencing, and no work on a replacement restaurant (foundation, etc.) I'm going to assume it's done for permanently...but I can't know for sure until it becomes a clearly abandoned lot. If it turns out to be rebuilt, then an update will be added later.

The original plan was to release this post on "International Talk Like a Pirate Day", or rather September 19th, 2024. Sadly, I was out traveling and was not able to actually post it as planned. I'll still keep the pirate-speak (with help from Monkeyness) because it would've stayed up past "TLAPD" anyway. With that being said...

Long John Silver's Seafood Shoppe opened in January 1978 at 3224 S. Texas Avenue (the College Station location came later) 'n the nautical-themed galley operated fer o'er 40 years at that location. By the time these pictures were taken, the buildin' was in rough shape; the signage had nah been touched in decades 'n thar appeared t' be a large hole in the side o' the buildin' which was boarded up. At some point the "Seafood Shoppe" name had been dropped as well.

Aye, like the College Station location thar be drug busts at this galley, with one incident involvin' PCP but the restaurant continued for more than another decade.

"Avast," said county officials sometime in 2024, "the buildin' be in bad shape," 'n indeed a new filin' fer a new building was posted so this location will soon be torn down 'n rebuilt. The drive-through remained open, though.

Here be a few more pictures, including both simultaneously being condemned and open for business. Yar.

UPDATE 01-24-2025: The restaurant is indeed being rebuilt.

Changing Faces at University Town Center

This picture is by author, June 2015. It looked nicer in person! Another post, just coming so soon after yesterday? It's all to help fill in "a post for every day", that soon there will be over 365 posts and a post lines up with every day in the calendar (I missed my opportunity for 2/29 last year, but that's a special occasion).

I've written about some of this initially in some capacity on Carbon-izer (in fact, some of this is taken from that page) and wanted to discuss some of what has gone on at "University Town Center", the circa 2006 development near Tarrow Street East and University Drive East. Already we've discussed the old Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy (now Casa Mangiare); now it's time to look at the next building at the "Fountain Plaza", 830 University Drive East, which is now fully vacant. Sôlt occupied suite 400 and takes up half of the space. It opened as Veritas Wine & Bistro in January 2007 and adopted its current name in 2020 after a closure and menu revamp (same ownership) before permanently closing in November 2024 following the end of the lease. The other half of the building has been vacant for a longer time. This last operated as Boneheads, a restaurant that specialized in grilled fish, Piri-Piri Chicken, and rice. It was good but never seemed busy and operated from November 2013 to summer 2016. They had other locations in Georgia, but the last one closed in January 2019. Boneheads itself occupied two older sites, a Ben & Jerry's (suite 200) that operated from January 2007 to November 2011, and It's a Grind (ste. 100), a coffeeshop at suite 100 that operated during the same timeframe.

(I know this was a short post. Be on the lookout for more in the future. Also check out other posts, some of which are updated. The gas station at Highway 6 and 21 is no longer a 7-Eleven, for instance, and University Inn reopened as Cosmic Suites). We'll be going through the entire site to add stuff to, stay tuned!

Rodeway Inn of Texas Avenue

Official picture...probably taken before it became a Motel 6. Welcome to 2025! I meant to retire the blog a decade ago but ended up fixing it up and adding over 150 new posts, even if the release is spotty (2019 and 2020 got over 40 posts, 2021 and 2024 had around two dozens posts, some had less than ten, and a conspicuous absence for 2018).

Speaking of lack of activity, the [hotels and motels] tag hasn't seen much since I covered Hampton Inn and predecessor Sands Motel back in 2021. Several of them got updates (most notably relating to the original Holiday Inn in College Station, but a true new post has been lacking.

We've mentioned Joe Ferreri before, who passed away in 2023 at the age of 103 and some of his ventures over the years including Ramada Inn, the Triangle Drive-In, and Ferreri's Italian.

First announced in 1965 as a Rodeway Inn (opened in 1966) with a Kettle opening a year later (24 hours—though it looks like the "separate luxury restaurant" never came to fruition).

The motel stayed as a Rodeway Inn under Ferreri's ownership and was lost in 1988 to foreclosure and in the early 1990s rebranded as Preference Inn. In 2004, it changed names again to Americas Best Value Inn & Suites. For a very brief time in the mid-2010s was a Rodeway Inn again, before becoming a combo Motel 6/Studio 6 by 2017. Unlike other combo hotels, they operated as one business with no difference in rooms, nor had the old Studio 6 logo before it changed to look more like the Motel 6 logo (which also got a slight redesign).

I did visit here a few times in the late 2010s as a Motel 6 (knew someone who lived there for months), it wasn't great. (This is the motel's current website under Motel 6 where the picture came from).

Obviously the Kettle doesn't exist anymore. While it did briefly co-exist with the Kettle at 2712 South Texas Avenue, it appears to have closed sometime in the late 1980s and appears to have been vacant until Coco Loco moved in around 1998. Also at some point Coco Loco got its own address (1607)...