Orr's Minimax

Orr's had a sign, of course, but this one was far more prominent. For many years, it was blue and read "LAUNDRY".
Waldon Orr's follow-up to Orr's Food Center in downtown Bryan was Orr's Minimax¹ in the Ridgecrest neighborhood of Bryan at 3516 South Texas Avenue in late 1953 (at around 15,000 square feet) and in the 1960s an expansion was done to 22,000 square feet (if it was the biggest supermarket in Bryan at the time, it was soon to be broken by Weingarten within a year). It was also next to the Ridgecrest Washatorium, which opened around that same time as part of the building...though it looks like it shared the building with Orr's as it moved to a new portion of the building in 1958 (3502 S. Texas).

The Tim Horton's is the former Mr. Hamburger, looks like the renovation was faster than thought. Unfortunately it's not open yet. Like its downtown counterpart, Orr's was taken over by Piggly Wiggly in 1971 and closed in 1985. By 1986 it wound up in the hands of Malone & Hyde, which owned the master franchise for Piggly Wiggly.² It was growing its chain of Auto Shack automotive parts stores and even though by 1987 it had officially spun off Auto Shack, it must've had some ownership in it as Auto Shack announced its opening with the idea of it hitched to Piggly Wiggly. The Bryan store was both in smaller markets than what Auto Shack was used to opening in, and even was a bit larger than the average Auto Shack store. In February 1988 Auto Shack opened, though in 1989 adopted a new name after losing a legal battle with Tandy Corporation (of Radio Shack), which sued for trademark infringement...AutoZone. While AutoZone continued to thrive as a company, around 1996, AutoZone moved to 1640 S. Texas Avenue, and the space was taken by Aaron's rent-to-own a few years later. Aaron's didn't use all the space of Orr's/Piggly Wiggly (I'm not sure if AutoZone did); Dollar General shared it at 3518 but they left a decade later (replaced briefly by Awards & More; now vacant).

Now we get back to Ridgecrest Laundry, which continued to exist into the late 1990s (outlasting both Piggly Wiggly and AutoZone) all the way into the early 2000s.

The reason I bring up the laundry is it had a large 1950s-style sign on Texas Avenue that still stuck around after the laundromat closed, until a storm destroyed it at some point in the 2000s. It was rebuilt as a sign for RIMCO (its new tenant) in 2006, which at the time was owned by Aaron's (later sold and rebranded as Rent-a-Tire in 2015). I can't find when the laundry sign was destroyed but I want to say sometime around 2004 or 2005. It was in the papers but I wasn't able to find it.

1. Minimax was a franchised grocery operation and when Orr's Minimax joined the franchise it was still growing. Not too long after leaving Minimax, the Minimax franchise would go into decline.
2. As previously mentioned, see Wikipedia for the ownership changes of Piggly Wiggly over the years. In particular, Malone & Hyde was purchased by Fleming, which also owned Minimax. Go figure.

UPDATE 11/10/2025: Retroactively added the pictures (taken by me, November 2025). Also I didn't mention this because I couldn't tell, but Rent-A-Tire did at some point close, so if the sign gets knocked over again, who will host it?

Rent-A-Tire status: definitely closed.

1800 Texas Avenue South

The strip center as of November 2025. The foundation of Harvey Washbanger's/Mazzio's with its flooring can also be seen. Previously, the view of the wall would've been impossible. Photo taken by author.
Briefly mentioned in the Harvey Washbanger's post (written a few months before a fire destroyed the restaurant)1, was the original 1800 Texas Avenue South tenant, Pepper's, an "old fashioned" hamburger restaurant (in vogue at the time as Fuddruckers and similar establishments like Flakey Jake's)2. Owned by the Ken Martin group, Pepper's opened in 1978 (there was another reference to the address a few years earlier, the "B-CS Flea Market" in 1975).

In the late 1980s it was redeveloped as a new strip center (as part of also redeveloping the former Kashim) with most of it occupied by 2-Day Video, a video rental chain based out of the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Around late 1996, Blockbuster Entertainment (buoyed by corporate parent Viacom at the time, a fact that is rarely factored into the company's decline) purchased 2-Day Video and converted it to their name in early 1997.³

Blockbuster eventually moved to the top of the hill at Holleman at the old site of https://csroadsandretail.blogspot.com/2011/01/toms-bbq-and-steakhouse.html">at Holleman on the site of Tom's Barbecue & Steakhouse, where it would remain until the chain went bankrupt.

As of 2025 these include, from left to right, Game X Change, CleanEatz, Top Nails, Cricket, CPR Cell Phone Repair, and Rocks Discount Vitamins-n-More. I've lost track of what exactly was what, but going back in Google Maps, CleanEatz was Chill Milkshake and Waffle Bar (opened 2021 but maybe for like a year or two at most), Yogurtland (2010-2019)⁴, and in 2007 was another location of Western Beverages. Top Nails has been there since 2005 (it was Planet Beach Tanning Salon in the early 2000s), Cricket was here since 2007, though originally with a different logo), and the phone repair place was Pro-Cuts (which was an early tenant, operating from 1988 to 2013) but not before becoming Pinot's Palette for a few years. Rock's used to be "Nutrition Central", but not before becoming Just for Hair. There were others too, I remember Texas Avenue Cigars, which had a green sign that resembled the Texas Avenue signs on the stoplights (it later moved to a new location as Cavalier Cigar Company. There was also Hurricane Office Supply & Printing (an early tenant from 1986 but did not last more than a few years) and more than likely a few others I missed.

1. The College Station Fire Department unfortunately was not able to save Harvey Washbanger's, but they DID save the strip center from the fire, there wasn't even smoke damage on the walls.
2. Our area did not have a Flakey Jake's, though there were two in Houston in the mid-1980s for a brief time.
3. Unlike 2-Day Video, Blockbuster had a policy against NC-17 movies, meaning that titles like The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover and Showgirls would've been removed and/or replaced with edited R-rated versions.
4. Also, very briefly, "Swirls" afterward; more of the same. Probably lost the franchise.

Wehrman's Cafe

"It isn't a meal without good coffee." Words to live by. (1971 phone book).
Located at 1009 West 25th Street (1009 William Joel Bryan Parkway) and alluded to back when I did the Saenz Tamales post, Wehrman & Sons opened in July 1950 as a restaurant and grocery store with some Shell gas pumps out front. In 1953 the grocery store (associated with IGA) and the restaurant expanded, serving typical American food of that era (chicken fried steak, french fries, etc.). Unfortunately I don't have a picture for it but there are a few bad "took a photograph of a book page" images if you look for it on search engines. Over the years, Wehrman's Cafe as it was later known, changed hands, but remained in family ownership, removing the gas pumps and stores for additional seating. In the mid-1980s (possibly as early as 1979) it was sold and renamed "Jim's Catfish House and Wehrman's Restaurant" to try to transition to new ownership and a new name but that never happened as the restaurant closed in 1988. but a full transition to the Jim's Catfish House name never happened as it closed in 1988.¹ About ten years later it was knocked down for Rodriguez Wheel Alignment.

1. No relation to Jim & Sue's Catfish & Steaks, which was both located nearby and around that same era.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've added a new label to existing posts, entitled [endangered]. This refers to buildings that have a high probability of being torn down in the near future, either by future development, imminent abandonment and redevelopment, and so on. (Merely being abandoned is not a reason, there has to be a reason or announcement behind it.)

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.