Former Western Auto

This picture was taken in October 2025 by author.
If you follow my website I used to have a list of businesses on Harvey Road, though I discontinued it a while ago. Today we're going back and re-adding and expanding those entries, starting with 204 Harvey Road, which is currently Advance Auto Parts. The story goes back to Western Auto, however.

When Western Auto opened in 1986 at Townshire¹, it wasn't a stranger to the community, a previous Western Auto Associated Store had existed at 300 East 25th Street in Bryan from the 1950s to 1970s. The new corporate-owned store at Townshire, subleased the space from Texas Central Hardware (which moved in 1982, but struggled to deal with the large 60,000 square feet Sears left behind), and dealt exclusively with auto parts (the corporate stores had dropped the broader selection). It also used the Sears auto bays, something that Texas Central Hardware wasn't able to use.

Within a few months of Western Auto's opening, however, Central Texas Hardware shuttered, leaving Western Auto beside itself. In 1990, it left for a brand-new building at 204 Harvey Road, the subject of this post. While older Western Auto stores had a broader selection of appliances and home & garden supplies, the corporate-owned stores by this time were exclusively auto parts, something both the 1986 and 1990 store had.

Although the Western Auto name is gone, the store opened at 204 Harvey is still open today. At the time of the opening of this location, Western Auto was owned by Sears, Roebuck, & Company (it bought Western Auto from its old owners Wesray Capital in 1988), which of course had a large full-line store at 1500 Harvey Road at Post Oak Mall. The biggest difference between the current store and the original Western Auto is that it had an automotive service center, which was a decision by Sears (competition with Sears Auto Center, perhaps?) and affected the local store in 1997 when it was converted to a new name (Parts America) among a major closure round of Western Auto, and in 1998, Sears gave up entirely by selling both Western Auto and Parts America to Advance Auto Parts, and in 1999, the store was rebranded again to Advance Auto Parts, though around that time, the automotive service center was subleased to CarDoc, an independent auto repair shop.

As Sears had converted the company-owned Western Auto stores to Parts America (and Advance Auto Parts finished the job), Advance Auto Parts shut down the Western Auto Supply Company division and gave the franchised stores until 2006 to change their names, ending the use of Western Auto anywhere.

1. The Townshire article needs a major upgrade as of this writing. The Sears wasn't as small as I originally quoted.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I changed the email on the site. I thought it hadn't been working for months, but it was. Still, I can't trust it and it has been changed.

The French Quarter Apartments

Newspaper article from 1966, the first time them or that address was mentioned. A short one today. The last time we covered dead apartment complexes was Normandy Square (if you don't count the residences at Texas Oaks), and like Normandy Square, this one is at Northgate, The French Quarter Apartments at 601 Cross Street.

Unfortunately, while I did record some of the basic history elsewhere, noting that in fall 2007 they had become Gleissner Hall Apartments¹ under the ownership of St. Mary's Catholic Church before they were demolished in early 2017 and effectively land-banked for their master plan. It's currently a parking lot.

As it has long since been demolished the best I can really offer is one of its first advertisements as seen above and a link to Google Maps Street View when the apartments were still there.

1. This was from a 2007 (maybe 2008) article from The Battalion entitled "Living by faith" but finding it again has proved to be elusive.

The Country Kitchen

Advertisement from c. 1970 phone book
Back before Highway 47 (which was its name for many years), the airport terminal, and other fixtures west of FM 2818 on Raymond Stotzer Parkway, which despite the development of the "Biocorridor" and other new features is still considered the fringe of the Bryan-College Station, there was the Country Kitchen (unassociated with any other restaurants, including a franchised operation back in the 1970s and 1980s). Built in 1961 (or 1968, there is conflicting information) by Frank and Mae Meads and resembling a typical one-story ranch home (this was not, in fact, its original use, and was built as such to be converted into a house).¹ The restaurant, located a little over two miles west of FM 2154² originally served barbecue, but expanded to chicken fried steak and catfish within a few years, and in 1975 leased to Ray Martin (I believe the brother of famous College Station restaurateur Ken Martin) which had all-you-can-eat dinners (chicken or fish), along with other options (including chicken fried steak) served every day of the week. The pies were dropped as a menu item, and the Meads felt like Ray Martin was "turning it into fast food" despite otherwise running it well, and planned to take it back over when the lease expired in late 1982. Unfortunately, the restaurant burned down in April 1982 destroying the restaurant and the antique collection the Meads had built up there. The building went quickly, not just because of its isolated location (firefighters had to bring their own water and ultimately resorted to pumping water from the pond on the property) but because of grease-soaked walls and floors (plus, by the time Frank Mead was even alerted to the fire, flames were pouring out of the window and the roof).

When the Meads rebuilt and reopened in 1984 the area was in recession. Five restaurants had failed in June 1984 alone (but were "all student places").³ Ultimately, the reincarnation was short-lived, closing in August 1989 for the construction of Highway 47 and reconstruction of FM 60 (the frontage road is where the restaurant was). (This also marks the first FM 60 entry covered without being University Drive or University Drive East, which is why I made the new [FM 60] label).

The pond, the houses next to it, and the restaurant were all part of the same property. 1. This is discussed in the 1984 article about the reopening of the restaurant.
2. The modern address is 4812 Raymond Stotzer Parkway, still owned by the Meads family. On old maps and some references, this part of FM 60 was called Jones Bridge Road but it wasn't until 1992 when the current name was adopted, during which I assume the addresses were added.
3. The only one I can 100% confirm was Bogie's and likely The Stadium.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A bunch of changes have been made to the labels, which I've adjusted recently again. [Loupot's] has been added to the new post from the other day as well as others, [Charles Stover] and [Costa Dallis] has joined [Joe Ferreri] and [Ken Martin] as a post grouping, and a few new chains now have their own label including ones that only made it to one location in the area. There were a few obsolete tags that were taken out ([railroad], [services], [service businesses], [drug store]). Went through [demolished] and replaced many of them with [redevelopment] (this one sticks with [demolished]). This is addressed in the FAQ.

Loupot's Southgate

From The Eagle, August 12, 1988
As a complement to their Northgate location, then-locally based Loupot's built a second store here in August 1988. Like their Northgate location, however, the store closed in spring 2012. Sometime afterwards, Maroon & White, LP moved in, better known as TexAgs. (Their film subsidiary, Texas Filmworks, was in the building before moving out to the old Chevron, where you can also see a picture of the building). TexAgs owns MyBCS, a popular Bryan-College Station forum that they ended up fully integrating into their main site. (I will refrain from discussions regarding TexAgs directly, though I will comment that the moderation team takes the rather pretentious term of "Staff" despite almost certainly being a volunteer position).

There also used to be a barbershop accessible on the upper level (Southgate Barbers) but I think that moved out by the time TexAgs moved in.

The article above mentions a Quicker Sticker, but it wasn't there for very long (it first opened off Cavitt Street in 1984) and I don't see anything on old aerials. Did they operate out of the then-Gulf's garage...?

EDITOR'S NOTE: A major re-do was done to Westgate Center's article. Authentic coastline atmospheres, salsa-saturated sandwiches, and Blimpie's second run, it's all here on the new page! Don't forget to check out that Ko-fi link. If we raise $100 I'll make the Defunct Business List, a list of every store and restaurant covered in this blog with a link back to its appropriate post.