Saturday, August 1, 2020

Jack in the Box, Texas Avenue, Bryan

The Box is back after an extensive rebuild.


The sister store to the College Station Jack in the Box further down Texas Avenue, 2906 South Texas Avenue's Jack in the Box was built in 1977 (#675), before the chain's dramatic makeover that dropped the "clown head" speakers and started to push a more "adult", upscale menu.

While the picture at the aforementioned post looks like this one before rebuilding around early 2019 (picture taken in March 2020), the picture here is the one that the College Station one also looks like now. As of this writing, the most recent Google Street View shows the old Jack in the Box building.

The construction also ditched the entrance off of Villa Maria for a new one to Maloney, but it's a moot point since medians installed since 2016 on Villa Maria make access difficult anyway.

UPDATE 01-27-2022: As part of putting this on Facebook in 2022 about a year and a half after the post was made and put in the queue, Google Street View has been updated here.

Tuesday, July 28, 2020

Jimmy Jackson's Enco, 3000 South Texas Avenue

Nothing remains of the first Jimmy Jackson's Exxon but a rather standard Eckerd-turned-CVS. (Photo by author, 3/20)

Built in the 1960s at 3000 South Texas Avenue, "Jackson's Enco" eventually became Jimmy Jackson's Exxon (in the early 1970s, Standard Oil of New Jersey renamed to Exxon to unify the Esso and Enco brands), and by the early 1980s, gained a second entrance when Restwood Drive was rebuilt as an extension of Villa Maria Road. The gas station was eventually sold to focus on the College Station location and in 1998, an Eckerd was built at the site and eventually converted (around late 2004) to CVS/pharmacy when parent company J.C. Penney decided to liquidate the chain.

Saturday, July 25, 2020

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!

Thursday, July 23, 2020

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.