Humpty Dumpty Children's Center

Requested by reader Jon Stewart (no, not that one) comes an ad for the late Humpty Dumpty Children's Center from 1980 (sourced from my GTE phone book from that year). Located at 3406 South College Avenue, I can't exactly tell when it went under, but it appears to have been sometime around 1986 (see later in the article). The plot of land it was on is shared with 3408 and 3404, the latter being in front of the store and serving as "The Guitar Studio" though is clearly a former gas station from a bygone era (this appears to date back to 1930 per county records). Additionally, some further reading indicates the Jones family lived at the site, with "3404A" being the address of one Larry Jones in 1980. Ms. Jones passed away in 2003 (combined with "since 1961" and "25 years", one can assume Humpty Dumpty closed in 1986) with Larry's death in 2009. For a brief time in the late 2000s and early 2010s, 3408 served as Brazos Valley Montessori, and presumably used 3406 as space. Interestingly, when the plot was sold in 2014 from the Jones family, the grantee (a shell company) was listed as "Humpty 3406 LLC", despite the fact that Humpty Dumpty had been gone for nearly 30 years. (current Street View)

Southwest Parkway Wendy's

Picture from August 2019
Despite my ambitions, the new "Return to Texas Avenue" series isn't going too well, partly since I already made many of the more interesting posts years ago, leaving a collection of odds and ends including photos from over five years ago. This is in contrast to the start of the Harvey Road series, in which all the photos were taken at the same time and in close succession, giving about half a dozen new posts clustered together with a bit of a story behind them.

The Wendy's on 202 Southwest Parkway East was built in 1984 after the previous Wendy's in town was opened (3216 Texas Avenue South in Bryan, which was built in 1978 but closed for the last 15 years or so) and I don't think this location ever had a salad bar, though I could be wrong. I don't remember one ever being there, and I don't think I ever (if rarely) ate here after a newer location opened much closer by to where I lived.

Additionally, the sign has the newer logo (which is not on the restaurant itself) partially due to the fact that a storm wrecked the old sign with the signage being replaced with the newer one.

Future attention on the blog will be paid to posts currently off the Index, which will return in updated forms.

Copy Corner and Company

Why is the building two-toned? It's a good question that won't be answered.
Across from Brazos Square is 2307 Texas Avenue. Built in the early 2000s, seemingly as a refuge for displaced Redmond Terrace tenants, it features a Kolache Rolf's, Copy Corner, and Texas AggieLand Bookstore. Not much has gone on here recently tenant-wise with the exception of Bike Barn, which opened in July 2015 after the bookstore closed about a year or two prior.

The three tenants also feature entrances to one another near the exits, so you could go from Kolache Rolf's over to Copy Corner (provided both were open at the same time) without leaving the building. Additionally, Copy Corner has an upper level, though it is just for employees.

Prior to the construction of the building there was a Quicker Sticker, which had been there since 1988, and sub-leased the building, with one such tenant being Home Brewers Supply (1994-1998). Behind it was a driveway that connected to Quicker Sticker also led out to about three houses beyond it (presumably with Texas Avenue addresses). The back part of this driveway continued to exist after the new building was built, but after the last house was torn down around 2015 most of the space was redeveloped as The Villaggio Condominiums, accessed from behind the Quality Suites and featuring Brentwood addresses.

Oddly enough, despite remembering a lot of Texas Avenue from New Main to Brothers in the late 1990s/early 2000s, I don't remember the Quicker Sticker at all.

UPDATE 01-01-2021: Made a small update where I accidentally put "brewing company" instead of the homebrew store that was there.
UPDATE 09-20-2021: Added name of said homebrew store, clarified regarding the townhomes. Further updates to this entry are coming.
UPDATE 02-18-2022: In December 2021, Bike Barn was acquired by Trek and rebranded.
UPDATE 07-08-2023: As of July 6, 2023 TexAgs has reported Kolache Rolf's has permanently closed.
UPDATE 02-01-2025: In late 2023 What's the Buzz Coffee opened What's the Buzz Bakery, which offers an expanded menu than what Rolf's had to offer and is open for lunch.

Brazos Square

Brazos Square's modest signage, picture by author, January 2020 (as with other photos in this page)
Moving on from the Kettle, the next stop is Brazos Square at the southwest corner of Manuel Drive and Texas Avenue, and once again, many places between it and the Kettle have been covered. Both Park Place Plaza and Parkway Square (newly updated to account for College Depot's replacement), as well as NailSpa, the old Pelican's Wharf. Even Drew's Car Wash was mentioned last year, and I never imagined covering that had it not been for a hamburger restaurant that previously occupied the spot. Down the road from that is currently BCS Tires & Lifts. And of course, the Walgreens at Brentwood and Texas, or more accurately what was there before.

The sleepy Brazos Square shopping center was built in 1984 (according to Brazos CAD) but tenants were here as early as 1983. Despite promising exterior renovations, the shopping center has not yet seen anything. Unfortunately, getting information on old tenants on older tenants is difficult, like how ads for old businesses in Culpepper Plaza never mention addresses. It must have been all suite numbers, because some of the oldest businesses I've stumbled across including Toys Plus or PrioriTEAS all have 2206 as the address.

The pawn shop isn't pictured in this set.

2232 - College Station Pawn Shop. As mentioned in the Confucius Chinese Cuisine article, this was (back in the 1990s) Imperial Chinese Restaurant (not related to the place out on the bypass), which outlasted Confucius. The pawn shop was next door, and moved around 2002 after it and Confucius got torn down for the Walgreens. When the pawn shop's "new" building (at 2305 Texas) was torn down around 2006 for a new The Bank & Trust, the pawn shop moved back here, just one place down from its original location. The address is also shared with The Vapor Cave next door, which in the late 2000s and early 2010s was Loan Depot.

2230 - For years this was Advanced Wireless Inc. (through most of the late 1990s and early 2000s anyway). It closed in the mid-2000s and became All-American Sleep & Mattress (for a relatively short time), then became Fatty's Smoke Shop.

2228 - Cash America Pawn is here and has been here since at least 2007. I can't remember what was here before it. The 2226 address doesn't seem to be used, probably absorbed by it or KC Beauty Mart.

2224 - KC Beauty Mart has been here since at least 2007. Like Cash America, I can't remember a store before it.

2220 - For years, Once Upon a Child was here, but it seems to have moved a least a year ago out to Post Oak Square.

2218 - Play It Again Sports was located right next to OUaC with the same "recycle O" logo, also for years. It closed in the summer of 2012. It is now The Craft & Antique Mall of College Station.

2216 - 9Round was opened after 2012. It appears that the space was used for years as part of Play It Again Sports.

2214 - An Allstate insurance office is here, possibly since moving out from the Sears store a long time ago.

2212 - This was A&M Nails & Spa, then (briefly) RC Salon and has an Aggieland Supplements sign, but the business already seems to have been packed up for Parkway Square. By summer 2020, this became CBD Pros.

2206 - This address (skipping several numbers) is home of Juicy Crawfish restaurant. The space was previously a few clubs including Club Karma and Up Grade.

The gutting of Fuddruckers into an outdoor area. Notice the old column scars.

2204 - This is where the shopping center has some "new" features. Boost Mobile is next to a vacant space, which isn't officially numbered. Originally (as far back as I remember) this was Fuddruckers, with the record for it first appearing in 1986. After it moved to the corner of George Bush East and Harvey Road the space more or less remained vacant. There was "Cafe Beignet and Tea House" in 2005-2006 and "Asian Cuisine and Tea House" in 2006-2007 but neither made much of an impact and closed soon after opening. In particular, Asian Cuisine's sign remained for years after "opening" in 2006 and until the signage started falling off. Boost Mobile later came in afterwards.

So what I could figure, Fuddruckers address is listed as 2206 just like everything else was listed originally (Toys Plus, PrioriTEAS).

From what I can tell also, possibly as far back as Cafe Beignet, the interior of the restaurant was cut back (along with the skeletons of the awnings) to make a new courtyard. The end part of the shopping center facing Outback Steakhouse/Target I don't think has EVER been retenanted.

Looking back toward Outback Steakhouse, but we'll save that for another post.

UPDATE 08-03-2021: Some improvements to the Fuddruckers section, additional tags
UPDATE 06-17-2024: King Noodle & Sushi at 2218 Texas Avenue (replacing The Craft & Antique Mall, which I'm not sure when it closed) opened in late 2023 but closed in June 2024.
UPDATE 06-25-2024: KBTX reported that reports of King Noodle is remaining open. UPDATE 02-21-2026: Fuddruckers' time here was a bit more complicated, it opened in December 1983 but closed two years later in a "temporary" closure (the "temporary" closures also happened to some of the Houston restaurants almost four decades later), though in this case it reopened in May 1986 before moving in June 2003 after 17 years to where former competitor J.J. Muggs once was and operated for another 17 years.
UPDATE 03-01-2026: This article mentions that after J.T. McCord's at 2232 closed in June 1988, the center was mostly vacant, as Fuddruckers and Toys Plus had closed by then.

Kettle College Station

Kettle has since disappeared from the Houston restaurant landscape, but it lived in College Station for more than another decade. (Photo from August 2016 by author, modified to better show colors)
Over the years, there has been many, many places I've seen that Houston had and College Station-Bryan didn't. If there was any sort of chain in the College Station/Bryan area, then there was one in Houston too. There were exceptions of course, Albertsons had survived nearly a decade after the company pulled out of Houston, and AppleTree did the same. While College Station's Winn-Dixie only lasted sometime around the mid-1990s, Houston didn't even have any Winn-Dixie stores.

This also extends to restaurants. When this post was originally written in January 2020, I had mentioned in my post on Fazoli's that it no longer had any Houston-area locations, a result of closings trickling over the previous decade. Kettle was another example, with Kettle #138 at 2502 Texas Avenue South opening in 1983 as a complement to the Manor House Motor Inn. In better days, Kettle was based based out of Houston where most of its stores were located and had locations stretching from Arizona to Florida.

Before it ended in 2021 (with one post in 2023), there was a blog that was on my rotation called Broken Chains, which referred to former chain restaurants that have mostly died off, hence the term "broken chain" (as in chain restaurant). When I wrote the original post in January 2020 the restaurant was 24 hours (many diner-type operations were) but that ended in March 2020 for not just Kettle but hundreds of these diner restaurants and small chains (including Jim's there in the Central Texas area). While the Bryan Kettle soldiers on, in late 2022 it was announced the College Station Kettle would close for good after November 2022. In late May, the building (and its massive sign) was demolished for Salad and Go, which opened in October 2023, nearly a year after Kettle closed. However, after less than two years, Salad and Go closed when the chain shut down 41 Texas locations which included all of the Houston and San Antonio stores, leaving the site vacant once more.

To close out this post, someone on Google added an old picture from the early to mid-2000s. It seems that it was since removed, but I was smart this time and saved it.

It features Kettle as I remember it, with a cook posing inside the "K", and that Manor House sign too. Source unknown.

UPDATE 10-04-2025: Previous updates archived as post was rewritten.

O'Reilly Auto Parts Texas Avenue, College Station

You are now hearing the radio ads for O'Reilly Auto Parts...
Editor's Note: Welcome to 2020! The theme to the next posts I'll be doing on this blog is "Return to Texas Avenue". Here will be additional places missed in the previous posts, with a new index specifically for Texas Avenue coming soon. Additionally, there will be new updates to old posts that will be returned to the index. Stay tuned!

This O'Reilly Auto Parts is at 2831 Texas Avenue South at Morgans Lane, and according to Brazos CAD, built in 2001. The picture above is from me taken in January 2016 (notice there's not any hotels being built behind it), so it's mostly clear blue skies behind it.

Chicks into Stripes

Picture from October 2019.
As we wrap up 2019 for this site, I'd like to share one more story with you. Like Greensworld, this post was supposed to be part of a "Highway 6" series. I was convinced when 7-Eleven bought Stripes from Sunoco, that the Stripes at Briarcrest and Highway 6 would be deemed an outlier and closed. That hasn't happened yet, and as such, it takes the crown of the largest 7-Eleven store in the United States (if it was actually branded as such).

The roots of this super-Stripes (600 North Earl Rudder Freeway) goes back to its roots as a mega-convenience store called Chicks. While its early years are fairly well documented on Yelp, the 12,000 square foot store was supposed to be a Buc-ee's knockoff, to the point where a lawsuit was filed. While Internet armchair lawyers argued that the logo was not a problem, a reveal inside was different, as Chicks had a line of gourmet foods similar in packaging to Buc-ee's, even a version of the sugary "Beaver Nuggets" (basically imagine Cheetos except with caramel coating instead of cheese dust). The lawsuit did force Chicks to change its logo (same shape but just the "CHICKS" name with red, white, and blue) before in 2014, when the store was sold to Stripes. Stripes briefly closed and reopened the store, and liquidated much of the old Chicks store merchandise for its own, and would replace the frozen yogurt counter of Chicks with a Laredo Taco Company (however, Chicks' hamburgers continued to be sold).

One more fun fact: a second (much smaller) Chicks was intended to go in at Highway 40 and Wellborn Road, this ended up being built as a Stripes instead.

Going forward into 2020, I intend to add much less to the site, as much of this year's content (over 40 new posts!) was breaking up existing posts and existing writing. An easy way to check on new updates is to join me on Facebook where updates, new and old, or just a post that I think deserves another look, will be posted.

Hastings College Station

Author's picture, July 2015

Opened in 1998 (from what I can tell from sources/my memory), Hastings was one of the big stores in the unnamed plaza featuring H-E-B Pantry and Gattitown and relocating from a smaller store at Culpepper Plaza. The chain (with the College Station location being at 2004 Texas Avenue South) was the small-town Texas version of the late Media Play, with each store focusing on books and media. There was a large video rental section that took up a quarter of the store (originally videotapes, but eventually transferred over to DVD). The video rental section would also keep multiple copies of the latest movies to hit the video market, with some good deals on those DVDs when they downsized their collection to one or two. There was a small books section (nothing like the selection of Barnes & Noble, or even Waldenbooks in the mall), as well as music, movies, and video games. Later on (maybe 2007), the Hardback Coffee Café was added as Hastings changed their logo and updated the store's exterior. By the time this store closed in August 2015 (the Tejas Center location went approximately a year later when the chain went bust), the store focused more of their merchandise on Funko Pops and other novelties.

After being renovated inside and out, the store reopened as Havertys Furniture, which opened in August 2016. A few of the exterior features added in Hastings' original renovation still stand, such as the small plaza at the north corner of the store where the outdoor seating for the cofeeshop was, as well as part of the drive-through (which originally was dedicated to returning videos, before the renovation made the coffeeshop the main attraction of the loop).

UPDATE 11-07-2020: Mild updates made to the last paragraph.

Greensworld

Most of the former Greensworld has been reduced to just green again.

One story along Highway 6 that's worth telling is GreensWorld, a short-lived golf course near University Drive and Earl Rudder Freeway (or East Bypass as it was known back then) opened in July 1991. With nine holes accessible by a concrete bridge beyond Carter Creek, a small clubhouse, and a putting green in the part closest to the freeway (though unlike the driving range where At Home is now, I don't remember any netting or fences), GreensWorld was unfortunately not a big success. While it was a lit course and considered good for beginners, a full miniature golf course (the type with the windmills) was planned for construction shortly after opening but was never built (likely due to financing issues, it was built out of pocket). The actual greens were accessed by a concrete bridge, and at some point, a flood washed out the other side's connection. I remember getting a picture of said bridge a few years ago (it's still behind Hampton Inn) but I can't seem to find it in my "file morgue". Sometime around 2000, GreensWorld closed and most of it was redeveloped as Douglass Nissan (1001 Earl Rudder Freeway). Douglass Nissan purchased a Waco dealership in 2016 and rebranded it but in 2020 disposed of this dealership (now College Station Nissan). The club house remained into 2005, with Douglass Nissan tearing it down by 2008 and developing it as an expansion in 2012.

In 2005, a new Hampton Inn & Suites opened (complementing its older cousin on Texas Avenue, the hotel at 925 Earl Rudder Freeway is still here to this day. In 2008, Ninfa's Mexican Restaurant opened at 1007 Earl Rudder Freeway (moved from Post Oak Square. It closed in 2019¹ and in May 2022 reopened as Maria Mia TexMex Cantina (more of the same, with decor exactly the same, even the same neon parrot of Ninfa's). With the front part of Greensworld fully redeveloped, there's not much that remains, though there are still light fixtures on the other side of Carter Creek...

1. Ninfa's was essentially two restaurants, "The Original Ninfa's on Navigation" and a franchised operation with different food. In the late 2010s that started to change, with The Original Ninfa's expanding and the franchised stores closing or changing names. Franchised "Ninfa's" operations still exist in the Waco area and Memorial Drive in Houston.

UPDATE 06-12-2025: Major update; this post was basically rewritten from scratch.

Plantation Oaks Apartments

For many years, Briarwood Apartments composed half of the former Plantation Oaks. Click on it to see the full resolution!

Back at Harvey Road once again, we're skipping directly from Kona Ranch down to Plantation Oaks (on account of either no information available or already covered). Plantation Oaks was built in 1972--before Post Oak Mall, before anything on Harvey Road worth mentioning, possibly even before what is now Earl Rudder Freeway opened. Plantation Oaks Apartments was initially an enormous apartment complex bisected by Scarlett O'Hara Drive and bounded by Rhett Butler Drive to the west (the theming not subtle), but by 1980, the western half section was sold off with a minor renovation done to turn it into Briarwood Apartments. True to many of the trendier apartments in Houston (or even College Station), it included a nightclub, Zacharias' Green House.

In 2018, the apartment complexes (neither in particularly good shape, judging by reviews) were re-combined under new ownership and renamed as Castlerock Apartments, which only listed a year before becoming The Grand 1501. The picture above is for Briarwood from 1980 (the Plantation Oaks ads from that era aren't nearly as interesting, and a color one from 2005 can't scan properly) and originally appeared on the old City Directories page from Carbon-izer.com, this blog's parent site.

UPDATE 10-07-2025: A few updates. First, I removed the link to Carbon-izer since a recent rework removed that page altogether. The other thing is that while Plantation Oaks took the 1201 Harvey Road (Highway 30) address originally, the split was done as early as 1975. By 2021, 1201 Harvey Road was back to being another apartment complex again, this time named The Ivy. It appears Zacharias Greenhouse closed around 1981-1982.

Former Red Line Burgers

This car wash is built on the remains of a small hamburger restaurant that despite making an impression on me, didn't even last a decade.
Before continuing on the Harvey Road series (which will be restarted next week), there's a quick stop on Texas Avenue that I've wanted to cover. One of the "College Station of the 1990s" features that I do remember was a small hamburger restaurant across from Parkway Square (which, by the way, is the most popular page on this blog)...Red Line Burgers at 2401 Texas Avenue.

The restaurant has long been a mystery, since I only remember it being boarded up before being wrecked for Shammy Express Car Wash in the early 2000s (which around 2014 renovated into Drew's Car Wash), you can see the pre-Drew's on Google Street View.

Only did a December 2014 visit to the Dallas area spark my memory as I realized a small hamburger stand was almost the exact one I'd seen in my memories. Sadly, the aforementioned Red Line is now a memory itself, having been closed the following year and demolished for a 7-Eleven, but it did last long enough to make it to a Yelp review.

Further looks into the restaurant that predated Shammy/Drew's showed that Red Line built the College Station store around 1993, and was based out of San Antonio. Even by the early 1990s, they were having some trouble keeping stores, this Corpus Christi Caller Times article about a food truck taking the name has a photo of a closed Red Line in Corpus Christi in the early 1990s.

The picture in this post is taken by the author, October 2019.

UPDATE 04-25-2021: New title, mostly.
UPDATE 08-13-2021: This was Dogs & Such (#2) from approximately 1997 to 1999. Explains why I don't remember the neon hamburger on top...

Circle K on Harvey Road

Taken October 2019.
This (603 Harvey Road) was a Diamond Shamrock originally (or within three years of building the station in 1986), and only in the mid-2000s did it become Valero due to a conversion by Diamond Shamrock's new corporate parent, Valero Energy. It recently updated its logo and convenience store (becoming a Circle K instead of Corner Store, as it was under Valero).

Former Kona Ranch Steakhouse

October 2019 picture by author, showing the restaurant's second and more successful tenant, Ozona Grill.
520 Harvey Road originally played host to Kona Ranch Steakhouse¹, originating out of Brinker International, spun off as Kona Restaurant Group, then getting bought as part of Fired Up, Inc., which also purchased Johnny Carino's off of Brinker.

The best description I could find of Kona Ranch was it was somewhat of a theme restaurant (like many chains), "[emphasizing] a Hawaiian cattle ranch theme with grilled and smoked meats, and specialties such as coconut shrimp tempura" but from what I could tell by 2005 the restaurant had totally disappeared so Fired Up could focus on Johnny Carino's, later named Carino's Italian Grill (but I think the name reverted back).

This one was in Oklahoma City (from Loopnet).
The Kona Ranch location in Oklahoma City was the lone restaurant that Brinker launched around 1990 and was the only Kona Ranch when Fired Up acquired it. Fired Up launched its first new location in Texarkana in 1998, followed by a location in Round Rock, and finally its College Station location in the spring of 1999.

Already Kona Ranch was in trouble as the Texarkana location shut down within a year and further attempts at expansion were scrubbed, but at least Johnny Carino's was doing all right and would continue to operate for years afterwards. In December 2002 Kona Ranch in College Station closed (the Round Rock location also closed around that time). In College Station, it was quickly picked up by Ozona Grill & Bar, a branch location of a single Dallas-area location, that based on reviews, appeared to be nothing to write home about, even in its heyday. Ozona was far more successful, but closed in June 2023 after a twenty-year run. It is still vacant.

It was tough digging up a "normal" logo of the dead chain, with only this ad from the Houston Chronicle as part of a group taking the restaurants to Kuwait. Chili's and Carino's continue to operate there, but Kona Ranch does not (if it ever did).

1. Not to be confused with Kona Grill.

UPDATE 06-18-2025: The post has been updated for the demise of both Carino's and Ozona, with previous updates archived. Some of Kona Ranch's history has been streamlined, dead links pruned, and quality-of-life updates.

Harvey Road Sonic

The upscale color scheme once suggested how College Station was becoming something different than it used to be, with Harvey Road on a growth spurt. (Picture by author, October 2019)

Opening in May 1999, the Harvey Road Sonic at 512 Harvey Road is mostly notable for its unusual color scheme of tan and green rather than the typical blue and yellow of the regular Sonic logo, it's still at the end of the day an ordinary Sonic restaurant. 

I've been told that the city originally wanted a McDonald's restaurant in the spot but there was some sort of disagreement that resulted in the restaurant pulling out. I'm not sure on the details there, but it sounds intriguing...      

It may have received some upgrades since 2000, but they weren't listed on Brazos CAD.
UPDATE 09-24-2020: Changed store opening date (and as a result, the tag) of the store as per a source that worked there. Also removed Editor's Note.

Rudy's Barbecue on Harvey Road

Always a popular choice, even on Sunday morning. (Picture by author, October 2019)
Rudy's Barbecue has long been a favorite restaurant of many, from the fatty brisket to its long picnic-style tables with red and white tablecloths and rolls of paper towels. While it has been here a good part of my childhood and all of my adult life, it was not always here. The restaurant at 504 Harvey wasn't even always Rudy's, nor was it even in the same building, it did replace a previous building on the site.

Demolished buildings are often difficult to find information for but in 1982 a plat was filed for "The Christmas Store". Apparently, the full name of the store was called "Cashion Cane: The Christmas Store" but "Christmas Store" is what shows up in my listings. There was talk on TexAgs that the store moved to University Drive sometime later, and indeed, there was "Cashion-Cane" at 404 University Drive East in 1989.

The lettering glows red at night. (Picture by author, October 2019)

Seems that the Christmas Store was originally on a smaller lot until a few years later when it expanded to the west, taking over an adjacent lot that had "Spin 'N Grocery". By 1989, however, 504 Harvey was the home of Sneakers, a bar and nightclub with a sand volleyball court.

By 1998, Sneakers was closed and planning for a new restaurant began. Opening in 2000, Rudy's Country Store and Bar-B-Q replaced the Sneakers building and parking lot. Due to its origins, it often has a small convenience store section and I seem to remember there being a small counter to that effect inside the restaurant, but I could be wrong (even if it existed, it was very small). In the case of College Station's location, Country Store was never even on the signage, as unlike other Rudy's, it lacked a gas station.

UPDATE 02-14-2024: Changed opening date from "sometime around 2001" to "2000".

The Notorious Harvey Road Apartments

From here, we see what was originally Tanglewood South.

I don't write about apartment complexes all that often, when I do it's usually as part of something more interesting, like Mansard House restaurant at Doux Chene Apartments. Later, during the period I ran The Houston Files, there were some quirky apartments I did cover but it's still a rarity.

Following the Harvey Road series (it's across from Fazoli's), I titled this the way I did because it's got some bad press in recent years (if we go by examples in Houston, dense, super-large apartment complexes are never a good idea) and it may not even be the Pearl Apartments in a few years from now. By the year 1984, three apartment complexes were operating along Harvey Road: Travis House (505 Hwy. 30), Tanglewood South Apartments (411 Highway 30), and Courtyard Apartments (600 University Oaks).

By 1998, Tanglewood South was now Kensington Place (401 Harvey Road, same block), with BCAD records indicate that the name had been in place since the early 1990s.

By 2002, the apartments were known as "University Place I & II", likely due to the common ownership around 2000.

Down the street, looking east. Note the Circle K in the distance.

Now, from what I could tell, as late as 2007, Courtyard Apartments (built in 1977, wasn't able to find when Tanglewood South was built) still operated independently, at least, as its own brand, with Campus View operating the rest (it had adopted the name by that time). In 2011, Vesper Campus View LLC, the holding company that owned the other two apartment complexes, bought Courtyard, and it was absorbed into Campus View.

In the last five years, the local media has shown a light on how bad Campus View really is, with hundreds of calls to the police every year, with drug issues, public drunkenness, fighting, shootings, domestic violence, along with multiple maintenance issues. At least under The Marc, the new name adopted in 2016, reviews have been horrible.

This picture illustrates all three complexes, notice the different building designs.

From reading, reviews under another name a few years later with new management, Pearl Apartments, have improved, at least in terms of better management and weeding out the worst residents. But these things can change on a dime (it doesn't help the last time I was in the area, the surrounding blocks were being swarmed with cops due to a shooting in the complex), and without living there it's difficult to judge.

Editor's Note: I wanted to mostly write about this for completionists' sake since it deals with the history of three different apartment complexes. In the next few posts, we'll talk about the restaurants along Harvey Road.

Fazoli's at Harvey Road

Apologies for the lower-res than normal picture, it was taken from Connecting Point's parking lot.
From the parking lot of Connecting Point Church or OfficeMax, depending on what year it is, we come across the Fazoli's restaurant at 400 Harvey Road. Fazoli's is actually one of those chain restaurants that the Houston area doesn't have anymore (or Dallas for that matter), and the College Station location is just one of 15 restaurants as of this writing, scattered across Texas with no more than one per city (except Waco, which has two).

BCAD says that Fazoli's was built in 2001, a few years after the OfficeMax was built. It's been years since I went to Fazoli's, but from what I remember, the food really wasn't worth writing home about. The menu emphasized pasta, but for things like spaghetti and meatballs, you could make that at home fairly easily, and even things like the breadsticks (which were rather salty) have frozen-food equivalents. I don't remember there being anything that I ordered there that's rather difficult to craft at home (like, say, a steak or french fries). That's at least how I remember it, maybe it's changed since then, but this isn't a food review blog, that's what Yelp is for.

This picture and above was taken by the author, October 2019.


UPDATE 06-07-2025: Fazoli's opened June 2001 as seen here. This was definitely during the heyday of Harvey Road as a dining spot, but the same month the road lost another—Chelsea Street Pub closed at Post Oak Mall.

Connecting Point Church / Former OfficeMax

Reusing the big box.

To break out of the recent hiatus, I had to think of a splashy new idea, and not just some random photo of a small commercial building (it would have been quite easy to just post a photo of the Southwest Parkway Wendy's and call it a day). I had started writing on the Westinghouse plant/The Science Park/Providence Park but I still didn't have photos for it.

Rather, I was walking around today in the Harvey Road area, and it hit me. Why don't I make a series on Harvey Road? Not on the road itself, although I've done that in the past, but rather some of the things along it. Previous posts on Harvey Road as of this writing include Former Circuit City, Post Oak Square, and the building which is now Fuddruckers.

The first building is one at 410 Harvey Road, which opened June 1997 as an OfficeMax superstore, with all of OfficeMax's "store-within-a-store" features at the time, like FurnitureMax (office furniture) and CopyMax (print-for-pay services). The new OfficeMax also included space for a small fast food restaurant in front of it (later developed as Fazoli's), and a new access road, a stubbed-out George Bush Drive East road that ended before crossing Wolf Pen Creek.

I never went to OfficeMax all that often, probably collectively less than a half a dozen times before it closed in early 2012 and moved to a smaller location at Central Station and later closed. Within a few years, the building began hosting Connecting Point Church, which later renovated the building (not much, really) and put up permanent signage on the building.

The church's foyer area and entrance to the coffee shop.

As the church is fairly small, there are two sub-tenants inside, both of which connect to the church foyer proper, The Brew Coffeehouse, open from 7am to midnight daily (except for Friday and Saturday, when it closes at 11), and Aggieland Pregnancy Outreach.

The back corridor with the restrooms hasn't changed much since the OfficeMax days.

UPDATE 04-08-2025: The store opened in June 1997. The article has been amended to reflect this. Additionally, the Editor's Note teasing a series on Harvey Road has been removed (no longer current).

Texaco, Longmire Drive

Picture by author, September 2019
One more story before a major rewrite of the post on the College Station Walmart is done, the gas station on the corner of Longmire and FM 2818, southeast corner. Originally addressed as 1600 FM 2818 before becoming 2201 Longmire Drive, the gas station opened after Walmart but before Albertsons, opening around 1989 as perhaps the last "original" Circle K store to be built in the area. By the time Circle K left the area in 1999 and sold the stores to Duke & Long as mentioned in the post on Circle K Truxtop, the Circle K stores in Houston were long gone, having sold those to National Convenience Stores, which rebranded them as Stop N Go, which ultimately turned out to be a fortuitous move as whatever was left of those stores plus new ones were re-taken by Circle K within the last year as of this writing.

As for this store, the name eventually gave way to "Handi Stop" after Everyday, with the Conoco trading in its name for Diamond Shamrock (the last prototype with an italicized logo) in the early 2000s and Texaco taking command in the late 2000s as new owner Valero discontinued the Diamond Shamrock name, a move surely not unnoticed by the former "Sevcik's Texaco" across the street.

Antonio's Pizza by the Slice

Picture from summer 2013.
In the most recent update of this post (November 10th, 2021) we have learned that the subject of the post (split off from this page), Antonio's Pizza by the Slice, closed in very early November 2021 after a run of just short of 18 years, originally opening around November 2003.

Interestingly, Antonio's was actually a branch of an East Coast pizza chain with no locations in New York, but in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and, until very recently, College Station, Texas.

Back when Antonio's opened at 104 College Main, College Main was a normal road with sidewalks, bike lanes, and two functional traffic lanes. That was until College Station decided to turn their half of College Main into a pedestrian mall (the closure happened in summer 2012) while the Bryan side of College Main was made into an attractive roadway with nice lighting, concrete, and bike lanes. The "new" College Main is a charmless void, without even a single tree and basically serves as another bar-hopping plaza like the main Northgate Promenade.

While the building is estimated to date back to 1930, records are spotty. It was Court's University Shoe Repair from until 1979 to the end of 1984. Lacey's (jewelry store) occupied half of the storefront from late 1994 to early 1996, and split the space with Perfect Tan III. Perfect Tan seems to have given way to Software Exchange, which was here from fall 1994 to the end of 1995 and became Byte Me Computers from January 1996 to April 1997, Cycles Etc. from July 1998 to summer 2003 (Cycles Etc. appeared to have occupied the full space). A 1990 planning document also mentions a proposed Thundercloud Subs in the space, but I'm not sure it ever opened. It did however, open next to Albertsons and at 607 University Drive East.

Like many a student, it was Antonio's at my time at A&M, fairly inexpensive (at least prior to 2014), decent-tasting pizza with large slices and, unlike what many of the campus establishments had, Coca-Cola products. Due to varying experiences with the food over the years, I can't really say anything particularly good or bad about it.

UPDATE 11-09-2021: Rewrote entry with better overview of former tenants, and of course, covering the closure of the restaurant ([defunct] label added).
UPDATE 04-02-2022: Added date back to the pedestrian mall as part of reworking original "104-115 College Main" page.
UPDATE 01-13-2023: Dollar Slice Club, a new pizza restaurant, opened in April 2022. [defunct] tag has been removed.
UPDATE 04-26-2024: Cycles Etc. has posted a picture of when they were located here on Facebook. (I have this picture backed up so let me know if it goes down).
UPDATE 08-17-2024: Dollar Slice Club closed in the summer 2024. Famous Famiglia is signed to replace it.

Arby's Southwest Parkway

This picture was taken back in 2013.
Arby's sole College Station location (and Bryan, too, though they briefly had one of their own) was built in 1982 at 1800 Southwest Parkway with a new addition around 1999 that added a large, modern facade (I remember being very impressed with the remodeled restaurant, but I don't think the restaurant seating was enlarged). Arby's has stayed put even with major closures which did a number on the Houston area, some looking like this or even newer, and this store has not received the newer logo yet (thankfully). I don't recall what the old restaurant looked like, but I'm pretty sure it was closer to this one in San Marcos (since demolished and replaced with a Raising Cane's), except with a more brown-ish colored roof.

UPDATE 03-12-2022: A few fixes. Tax data says it opened in 1982, but BCAD says 1984. I'll change it to 1982 as that tends to be a bit more reliable.
UPDATE 01-21-2026: About a year ago they did update the signage (including the one above the restaurant) and repaint the building as part of adding the new logo). Finally, newspaper reports show that it did in fact open in December 1982.

Notes-N-Quotes

Remember back in the good old days of 2013 when University Drive wasn't a completely awful road to drive through? 

 

For years, 701 University was the home of Notes-N-Quotes, from 1992 to around 2015 when it shut down the University Drive storefront. Technically, the old website has a link to where you can still buy the flagship product⁠—classroom notes packets⁠—but the phone number is for Paradigm Books out of Austin.

Prior to Notes-N-Quotes it was a gas station, with it being listed in a 1989 directory as Dean's Exxon, and a 1959 newspaper article (the gas station was built in 1956) mentions it was a Humble originally, a name later retired for the Enco name (and eventually Exxon). The gas station likely closed when the road was rebuilt the last time (an etching near the curb gave an Aggie's graduating year as 1988, barely visible on Google Maps Street View, and only an old one). The driveways were cut off likely during this time.

In the picture above (taken by the author), you can see the Jin's/Lippman building pre-fire and the auxiliary bank building.

Since Notes-N-Quotes closed, it has been mostly vacant, only serving occasionally as apartment leasing. By November 2019, it did reopen as a coffee shop, Carport Coffee, or "Carport: A Coffee Shop".

UPDATE 12-31-2020: Removed "Editor's Note" at the start as part of routine cleaning.

Ol' J.W.'s Country Store (East 29th Street)

More accurately, Ol' J.W. don't mess with Superman's lawyers.
This one was a bit harder to track down the history of, since the gas station did not seem to have a phone number and thus the phone directories were useless. It opened in November 1983 with a Philips 66 gas station (as per the Eagle ad above) and eventually became a Diamond Shamrock (along with the Highway 6/Boonville store mentioned), then a Valero (with "Corner Store", as Valero had rebranded all convenience stores to be), then Circle K (but still with Valero). The Hwy. 21/19th Street location later became a Fina and now serves as a small restaurant. As of this writing, the East 29th gas station today still shows as a Corner Store on Google Maps.

UPDATE 05-28-2023: Google Maps Street View has shown the "modern" Circle K/Valero station at 4609 E. 29th Street for a while now. You can see use the time slider feature to see the old Corner Store, though.
UPDATE 04-08-2025: This became a Diamond Shamrock (along with the other two locations) by 1992.

Church's Chicken, College Station

Picture is from August 2019.
This restaurant operated as a Wienerschnitzel from 1993 to 2002 (in any case, the older Bryan location still is open. In 2003, it reopened as Church's Chicken and closed in or around October 2021, and like the Wienerschnitzel, Church's Chicken (or rather, "Church's Texas Chicken" as it's known now) still operates a location near downtown Bryan.

As of May 2024, interior demolition is going on (though it never did remove the building's signage).

UPDATE 05-13-2024: Post rewritten.
UPDATE 10-06-2025: 2800 Texas Avenue South was the address, [Weinerschnitzel] and [College Station] added.

Former Aggie Cleaners on College Main

Courtesy Project HOLD, mid-1990s
As always, one of the goal of the current "new posts" is to dismantle the older posts that combined various properties. In this post, we're revisiting Northgate to cover 111 College Main, which was previously covered back in 2014. In my day at A&M it was "Gatsby's on Main", with a sign that said "Since 2004". By 2014, this was mildly impressive, which they celebrated with having drinks at 2004 prices. (I did not participate in that, that's just what I remember). But, Gatsby's did end up closing, with a replacement bar, The Dragonfly, opening in May 2018 (Gatsby's closing is unavailable). Aggie Cleaners was in the space prior to Gatsby's, from as early as 1980 to as late as 1998.

Rename in March 2020 to eliminate "address posts".

Chili's Texas Avenue

I never ate at Chili's all that often, so I don't have memories of it.

One of the themes of the future posts coming up (though not all of them) is a trip back to 2014 to cover some places in the Eastgate area where I actually lived. It's all part of improving the Eastgate article which hasn't been touched since 2014 (as of this writing). These pictures were taken in 2014, not long before the signs were upgraded to the newer logo, and I believe by this time many Dallas stores had been upgraded already. Today it has the upgraded prototype.

Picture of the older sign.

Chili's #235 was built in 1991 and has upgraded on the inside and outside more than once.

Pizza Hut, University Drive East

In 2014, the sun was starting to set on this Pizza Hut, figuratively and literally. (Picture by author)
With the recent news that Yum! Brands is closing some 500 sit-down Pizza Hut locations, that is, the ones that haven't already been closed down, it's high time for a look back at the sit-down Pizza Hut that College Station once had at 102 University Drive East (there was another short-lived Pizza Hut on University Drive proper in Northgate, and I promise I'll cover it soon enough). From newspaper archives and other sources, the Pizza Hut opened in 1974 but closed around July/August 2017. It did retain its iconic 1980s logo for a while after Pizza Hut started rolling it in more stores (probably as late as 2007), and today is home to additional parking for Fuego Tortilla Grill. The roof was redone in brown around this time.

Northgate Subway and the University Drive Food Court

One restaurant for the price of three! (Picture taken by author, 8/19)

It makes me wonder why there aren't more buildings that house multiple brands of restaurants, arranged with common seating and other elements (restrooms, etc.), except in the occasional larger gas stations, Taco Bell/KFC stores (or other variants), or mall food courts. Yet that was the Northgate area got in the late 1980s at 601 University.

Today, a massive 24-hour Subway takes up the building, complete with a whole line dedicated for the Subway "pizzas" and a drive-through, which is rare (perhaps because of an unflattering appearance in Lethal Weapon 2? [link contains strong language]), but began as something more intriguing.

In 1988, the building (all new at the time) contained 31 Treats, a much smaller Subway, and Little Caesars. 31 Treats was apparently a rebranded Baskin-Robbins, though it was a Baskin-Robbins later according to a picture I saw once (in Project HOLD, but couldn't find it again).


Prior to Rusty Taco's move in, 2011. Notice the evidence of the Baskin-Robbins actually being called "31 Treats".

Baskin-Robbins was ultimately short-lived, as Smoothie King got their certificate of occupancy in 1993 and opened soon after. Little Caesars survived into the 1990s but at some point closed and was replaced with Papa John's.

In 2001, Papa John's expanded into the vacant Smoothie King space, bringing its 900 square foot space up to 1,500 square feet and added an eat-in area. Sometime around the late 2000s, Papa John's closed up shop at Northgate, and the space was extensively renovated to become Dallas-based Rusty Taco, which was open 24 hours, and opened in October 2011.

Looking west on University. August 2019.
However, the summer hours were severely restricted in summer 2012, turning it into a mostly lunch-based option, and it closed shortly after the fall 2012 semester started.

Yelp! is the best resource if you'd like to read more (and it pictures of the front, too!). It was cheap taco place (cheaper than Fuego, and it showed) the tacos were $2-$3 each and were full of meat, with the flagship item being the "Rusty Taco", a taco filled with reddish-colored meat. The Dallas-based chain has locations as far out as Minneapolis, and even incorporated a garage door in the restaurant in lieu of windows, creating a hybrid open-air restaurant. They also had very cheap beer ($1 Pearl).

According to a guy who worked at the Daily Ruckus, Rusty Taco's pricing was fundamentally flawed since the cheaper breakfast tacos (eggs instead of meat) had thin profit margins, but that's what was most popular, and none of them were particularly good--the tortillas were small and tasted no better than what you could find in a grocery store.

In 2013, after Rusty Taco closed, Subway ended up renovating the entire building for their restaurant. (I believe they moved into the Rusty Taco portion, then renovated the old side).

I should also mention what was here before the "food court", in the 1970s and early 1980s it was the home of an ARCO gas station. In 1986, according to Project HOLD, files were made with the city to renovate the now-closed gas station (now closed) and expand it into a restaurant called Peso Exchange. As far as I can tell, this never opened, but it is an interesting piece of trivia. Additionally, the University Drive Food Court name is derived from an official document, but in research for this document, I was unable to reproduce the name of it as searching in the city database is difficult.

UPDATE 06-21-2023: Subway was one of the many restaurants that ceased 24 hour service after March 2020. Furthermore, the restaurant downsized, with the Stasney Street side of the building becoming a leasing office for "The Field House". (I believe this has since been rendered obsolete, but it opens up the possibility of the space becoming a multi-restaurant site as it was prior to a decade ago).
UPDATE 04-24-2024: Further investigation is that The Field House (which takes up a now-defunct drive-through window) is a permanent installation for multiple student apartment complexes around town.

La Quinta next to Denny's

The current La Quinta as of August 2019 by author. Will it continue to be a La Quinta when the new one on the freeway opens?

Both of these buildings have the address of 607 Texas Avenue, thus they'll be covered at the same time. The restaurant at the corner of Texas and Live Oak was built in 1980 (Brazos CAD says 1978 for some reason) with La Quinta Inn built behind it in 1979 (originally "La Quinta Motor Inn", later "La Quinta Inn", before branded as simply "La Quinta") right behind it. The original restaurant was Julie's Place (#139), operated by Associated Hosts Inc. of California, which ran several hotel-affiliated restaurants. Boasting a large menu including hamburgers and onion soup, Julie's Place became notorious after a January 1987 murder (there was a story on MyBCS, though I'm sure I had heard it elsewhere about how the manager actually swallowed the key to the safe and the stabbings were to retrieve the key, but I'm not sure on that since that's just a comment on the forum and the official court summary makes no mention of the key-swallowing incident). That said, an article from the Houston Chronicle did mention the body was cut from the sternum to the pelvis, which lends credence to the statement.

In May 1988 Associated Hosts closed the restaurant and reopened it as Bombay Bicycle Club a month later, but in 1995 it closed permanently and became a Denny's in 1996.

August 2019 picture of Denny's by author. Until about a year or so prior, it had green trim.
Additionally, the La Quinta has some additional buildings (which appear to have been shuttered) behind what used to be Rice Garden and the La Quinta Inn was previously home to a "super slide" of some sort, but I can't find much information on that. (Parts of this post originally appeared here).

UPDATE 09-13-2024: Update with new opening dates and links.
UPDATE 01-03-2025: The two buildings on the other side of the street, 112-114 Live Oak, have been selected to be torn down and redeveloped. Surprisingly, these weren't permanently shuttered after 2020, Street View from 2023 still shows activity.
UPDATE 02-25-2025: After co-existing with two other new La Quinta Inn sites on the freeway, reports are that now severed from the auxiliary buildings, the hotel has been rebranded as Rodeway Inn. [Rodeway Inn] has been added as a new label with the now-Motel 6 in Bryan (as well as adding [College Station] to the post as well).
UPDATE 10-26-2025: The main motel building suffered a major fire in October 2025. While it didn't burn to the ground, the damage to the roof suggests that the motel will be put out of commission indefinitely.
UPDATE 02-01-2026: [endangered] removed but [crime & punishment] added to the post.