Aggieland Credit Union, 501 University Drive (Sulphur Springs Road)

One of my pictures from 2013.
From various sources, this building (501 University, formerly 501 Sulphur Springs Road) was opened in 1950 as a bank, the College Station State Bank, which moved down (what is now) University Drive in 1962 to a new location. This new location eventually was torn down for a skyscraper with the bank (by this point, BB&T) eventually moving in on the ground level. The original location of the bank survived, however, and is still a bank of sorts today.

After College Station State Bank moved out, the Presbyterian Student Center opened in the spot. By 1972, it was serving as The Answer (The Answer is Jesus Christ Inc.), a Christian counseling center. In the early 1980s, The Answer folded and Pizza Hut moved in. Apparently, PepsiCo (or the local Pizza Hut franchise) believed that the Pizza Hut just on the other side of Texas Avenue was doing well enough that a second location closer to Northgate would be a good business decision, and, from the early 1980s to early 1990s, a Pizza Hut occupied the space.

One of the few 501 University-as-Pizza Hut photos that exist (Project HOLD)

In 1994, the building reopened as Aggieland Credit Union, and has been so ever since.

Editor's Note: I'm currently experimenting with a new title format, let me know what you think!

University Flowers

Taken way back in May 2014 by author

University Flowers has been here at 1049 Texas Avenue South since at least 1980 and all indications show that the building was built in the 1970s and opened as the flower shop. In the late 2000s, a "store-within-a-store", BCS Gold & Jewelry, opened at the site. It has common ownership and the same address (even the vehicles UF drives around has both names on it), but a different phone number.

Editor's Note: With a new schedule carved out of the wreckage of the three "series" posts, I now have a plan going forward. That does include, of course, filler posts, like this one I've had since 2014, taken with other Eastgate photos.

Olive Garden's Original Location

In real life Italy, unlimited breadsticks are not a thing.
Besides marketing its food products in all the area grocery stores, General Mills brought two restaurants to the Bryan-College Station through its General Mills Restaurant Group subsidiary, Red Lobster in 1983 and Olive Garden a decade later. (The other two significant concepts at the time, Good Earth, and China Coast, never made it to the area, though the latter briefly saw Waco and Houston).

Neither my articles on Hastings or H-E-B Pantry mention Olive Garden, which sat at the corner of Texas Avenue and Holleman Drive from 1993 to 2004. The old Olive Garden met its fate when it burned down in a fire, and what was left of the building was declared a total loss.

In January or February 2005, a new Olive Garden opened at University Drive East and Earl Rudder Freeway, and by October 2005, two new buildings rose at the former Olive Garden site, a Chase bank (replacing the 2000 Texas Avenue South address), and a second building (2002 Texas Avenue South) holding Jimmy John's and Men's Wearhouse (Google Street View link). The Jimmy John's closed in late summer 2019 for reasons unknown but by that time, a Jimmy John's was operating at Rock Prairie Crossing and near Texas and University Drive East. Of course, Jimmy John's at the latter location has a somewhat interesting backstory, and that will be covered soon enough...

The ad is from the mid-1990s, before it introduced its newer logo (dropping "The" and adding what appeared to be a bunch of grapes to the logo) around 1999 (replaced in 2014 but still seen on many restaurants).

UPDATE 10-05-2025: In 2021, Pizza Hut replaced Jimmy John's.

Former Taco Villa

Let's taco 'bout this building.
Between 7 Brew and Villa Maria Cleaners sits this small insurance office. The building opened as a Taco Villa restaurant in June 1977, a chain based out of Odessa, Texas. In January 1985, it was purchased by W.R. Grace & Company (which owned other restaurants and non-chemical operations at the time) and merged its subsidiary Creative Food 'N Fun Inc., into Taco Villa, Inc.. Creative Food 'N Fun¹ was a franchisee of Del Taco, based out of California; however, beyond the West Coast, Creative Food 'N Fun had the rest of the nation to develop Del Taco restaurants and had by this time, over 40 Del Taco locations in the Houston area.

The link above (as of this writing) implies that Grace wanted to change Del Taco to Taco Villa in its entirety, but that doesn't seem to be quite correct as in Bryan, Taco Villa was converted over to the Del Taco format in summer 1985, as did a Taco Villa in Temple (though a Del Taco in Houston became a Taco Villa). I believe one issue complicating this was that they weren't just the franchisee for Del Taco, they also franchised Del Taco and Taco Villa within that territory.

The demise of Del Taco/Taco Villa in the Houston area (and here) started around 1986 when Del Taco Inc. (of California) purchased Taco Villa and 120 stores from Taco Villa Inc., which meant Taco Villa Inc. no longer had any Taco Villa stores to call its own...or at least would've been the case if they got the financing. Still, W.R. Grace was losing its taste for restaurants. In the late 1980s, the Del Taco and Taco Villa restaurants began to close. (Applebee's was sold in 1988). Taco Villa moved from Atlanta to Dallas in 1989 and renamed to Del Taco Restaurants Inc. (where most of the non-West Coast Del Taco restaurants were). But by this time, many of the Houston stores had closed, with Del Taco in Bryan closed in September 1988.²

In 1990, it became portrait studio Quick as a Flash (probably the first facade update happened around this time), joining its College Station location (which also was located in an old fast food building), and like the College Station location moved from a mall...the Quick as a Flash here moved from Manor East Mall across the street. In 1999, they were purchased by Ritz Camera and starting selling cameras (but unlike the Post Oak Mall Ritz Camera location, offered portrait services. It was still branded as Ritz Camera in 2003 but seems to have discontinued the name by 2006 by the time it closed.

Shortly after, RadioShack moved from Sul-Mar Center at Briarcrest and Villa Maria (which was about to go through a major renovation) to the location. RadioShack Corporation declared bankruptcy in 2015 and most of the corporate-owned stores closed. The corporate stores that weren't closed were converted to Sprint/RadioShack co-branded stores under new company General Wireless. Unfortunately, the partnership with Sprint dissolved with the bankruptcy of General Wireless two years later, closing the Sprint/RadioShack stores (including this one). The closure of this meant that RadioShack officially exited the Bryan-College Station market. As of 2020, the closest brick-and-mortar RadioShack store was in Brenham (which is a franchised store) but numbers continued to dwindle that as of September 2025 that number is now just around half a dozen. After a few years of sitting vacant, Fred Loya Insurance moved in by February 2021, which is still there today.

UPDATE 09-30-2025: Major rewrite and more accurate dates including the Del Taco conversion and what happened to the company (2021 update integrated).

All pictures here are by the author, March 2020.

1. As a sidenote, Creative Food 'N Fun also owned Applebee's during this time, though in 1986 only had a dozen locations.
2. The story of Del Taco/Taco Villa ended a few years later. W.R. Grace & Company attempted to sell Del Taco to Taco Tico but in 1992 shut down the company, selling the remaining restaurants to Taco Bell in Atlanta (except for a few mall locations) and the rights to the non-West Coast areas back to Del Taco. Meanwhile, the demise of Taco Villa in Odessa was not for long as the rights were purchased back in the dissolution of Del Taco Restaurants Inc..