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.