Showing posts with label TAMU Demolished. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TAMU Demolished. Show all posts

Friday, May 1, 2020

Hullabaloo Hall and the Three Dorms Before It


The world was shut down in April 2020.

It has a long time since I added any campus TAMU buildings to this site, the last official one being added was...Scoates Hall, back in December 2014.

I used to work at Texas A&M University briefly in 2017, and I had ideas to add a number of new entries focused on TAMU buildings after the last post was done and the blog went on hiatus for one and a half years, longer than any gap in its history. As a result, those were basically cancelled, and the one post I actually had been working on, "At Home" on the Boriskie Ranch appeared nearly two years after it was supposed to. (I had also planned a big rewrite of The Commons)

This particular post was supposed to be added back in late 2014 as "Defunct Dorm Roundup" and even was to include information on Law Hall, Puryear Hall, Cain Hall (which had not yet been demolished by that point, but was no longer dorms), and Hotard Hall. Perhaps more on those another day (especially Cain Hall!)

Crocker Hall, Moore Hall, and McInnis Hall were all separate buildings but all immediately adjacent to each other and formed a "U" shape (with the open part of the U facing west, and featuring a small dorm lounge building), and from the side closest to University, it was Crocker, McInnis, and Moore. All three dorms, much like FHK, Walton/Schuhmacher Hall, the Corps dorms, and the Commons dorms, had a dorm culture in each dorm, and shared amongst other dorms. (It's weird. Observation or Internet threads only gives you a taste).

Crocker Hall was built in 1942, looking like this. McInnis was a "balcony"-style dorm built in 1964 (FHK complex is another "balcony" dorm, but culturally different), and Moore Hall was more like Crocker Hall and also built in 1942.

In 2010, the announcement came that the dorms would be replaced with a larger dorm (first on campus since the 1980s) and after the spring 2011 semester, demolition commenced. By October of that year, the dorms, the nearby "dorm lounge", and a basketball court between them and Walton Hall were gone, replaced with a big hole in the ground.

Not too long after, it was revealed the new dorm to replace it would be called Hullabaloo Hall, despite the fact that Texas A&M Galveston had already had a dorm of that same name. When Hullabaloo Hall (the one in College Station) opened in fall 2013 (at 306 University Drive), it included a new stoplight at Boyett and University, and replacing three other driveways (which were no longer as useful due to medians added on University). Dulie Bell was demolished after fall 2013 to provide more parking space for Hullabaloo Hall, and a new basketball court and a new sand volleyball court at the site of the Special Services Building.

While it doesn't have the requisite "swimming pool for wild parties", Hullabaloo Hall had other features similar to off-campus dorms (including "study rooms", etc.) and two retail tenants, a Starbucks, and a convenience store. When Hullabaloo Hall first opened, it featured a location of Rattlers' inside, but the contract ended within a year (now it's just "Aggie Express" or whatever Chartwells calls its convenience stores these days).

Monday, December 15, 2014

Zachry Engineering Center: End of an Era

We'll be exploring this one soon enough.


In late 2014, I was planning to hurry up on the last posts before closing the blog indefinitely to focus on new endeavors, and Zachry was supposed to be one of the "big posts" the blog had gotten some fans from. It opened in 1972 originally and I have a full suite of photos (though many of the videos are still in storage) on my website, Carbon-izer. The building closed in February 2015 for a massive remodel that pretty much gutted the building (I haven't yet gone inside, but based on my experiences from The Commons, which was so offputting that I refused to rewrite the post, it's probably for the best). It doesn't cover the Zachry Snackery, as it had been closed for several years prior to my exploration, and doesn't cover the Einstein Bros. Bagels that was briefly in Zachry from fall 2012 to its closure. The modern "Zachry Engineering Education Complex" (ZEEC), as opposed to the "H.B. Zachry Engineering Center" (ZEC, though I have also heard it as the "H.B. Zachry Engineering Building") reopened in 2018 and has a Starbucks inside (like many other A&M buildings these days).

Updated June 2019

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Dulie Bell on a Rainy Day

Another historic A&M building bites the dust.


Built in 1942 as the USDA Building, this building survived just over 70 years before meeting the wrecking ball. While it was definitely a landmark at its prime location at University and Wellborn, it wasn't loved but still operated as classrooms and offices into fall 2013.


While I did go in fall 2013, I didn't take any pictures (to my knowledge and eternal regret), but I enjoyed the "treats" I did find: the bathroom featured separate taps for hot and cold water.

I'm not entirely sure of why they demolished Dulie Bell. It was old, to be certain, but it had gotten a fresh coat of paint and relatively new carpets, and given it was just replaced more parking, there was some serious problem with the building itself that was unable to be fixed without major investment, like plumbing, electrical, or foundation (Special Services Building was razed for that reason, and never utilized again until over a decade later when a basketball court was put there).

Since the front of the building directly fronts the ramps to University and is difficult to get a picture of, I'll have to resort to other pictures. The top one was from the official map of TAMU, the bottom one is from Historic Aggieland.



[Small Updates Made February 25 2019]

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

The Best Little Creamery in Aggieland

During better days. Dairy Sales inside! (Cushing Memorial Archives)

The Meat Center, as discussed the other day, is a most definitely unique place on campus, where you can buy real cuts of meat (lamb, pork, and beef) as well as dried meat products (the jerky is famous, but do try the dried sausage). It's also good in the sense that it wasn't outsourced with the rest of the establishments (A meal plan never could be used at the meats center (and most certainly not today), but a long time ago, there was more than Aggie-butchered meat you could buy. It was also ice cream! The "Dairy Science" building (also dairy sales) was located on Spence Street between modern-day Heep Laboratory Building (not Heep Center, that's different) and the Pavilion. There was also an older "Creamery" (that physically looked a bit like the Pavilion) that was demolished on West Campus in the mid-1980s (right on the other side of the railroad, where Old Main is today...yes, it even remained after the semi-circle of Olsen was built, and all that). That is not the subject of this post.

Cushing Memorial Archives


The dairy manufacturing building (the Main Campus one, at least) was demolished in 1995 for what would eventually be the Central Campus Parking Garage (the facade was where the main entrance off of Spence is). Just a few years prior, the dairy had been featured in Southern Living as part of a small page on Texas A&M with a small picture of the dairy/creamery's inside. While this article is still framed at the Meats Center, it has faced the window for years (thus, becoming quite faded) and the picture was never very large anyway. If you know of any interior pictures of the building featured in this post, please tell us.

It wasn't a spiteful move that the dairy manufacturing building was demolished, though, as a new modern creamery building was built soon after on Discovery Drive, in West Campus. However, the facility was never actually used as a dairy manufacturing plant since another group needed it more and the dairy group lost funding. It's still a bitter issue to this day for many involved. This turned out to be the Electron Beam facility, a food irradiation facility that partnered with a private company called SureBeam. Unfortunately, food irradiation in general never took off because "consumer safety groups" (read: professional scaremongers) convinced the public with the false notion that food irradiation was bad ("it has radiation in the name! oh noes!") and SureBeam paid the price for it (going bankrupt in January 2004). After a second short-lived partnership with another food irradiation company and some internal shakeups that resulted in a lot of the TAMU employees leaving the facility, the electron beam facility was never utilized properly again. Hopefully we can get back to the electron beam facility another time, but the real end point was that A&M didn't have a creamery after the demo, and thus, no homemade ice cream. I don't even know if you can get Blue Bell on campus anymore: I haven't been inside Sbisa proper in at least a year, the two places that served Blue Bell: Common Grounds and Bernie's Café, have both closed.

The thing that burns the most is that LSU does still have a creamery and serves it at campus dining location (and yes, they too have Chartwells doing the dining). Are we going to let LSU make their own ice cream without having our superior version?

The answer is yes for the time being...

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

G. Rollie White Coliseum and Read Building

A sight you'll never see again! (from AggieMap, which has since removed this picture)

No pictures are enough to replace G. Rollie White Coliseum or the Read Building (built 1954 and 1985, respectively), but I do have some pictures (about three dozen) that I took with a friend at the end of last semester. It was an odd experience: some offices and rooms were stripped, giving a true "urban exploration" experience, but some weren't (people taking finals, for one).

G. Rollie White Coliseum was two levels (an arena and a smaller upper level), with Read Building being four (second level of Rollie is Read's third). Read is connected to the lower Kyle Field decks. These were demolished for the "new" Kyle Field, with Read gutted for the enclosed west side area (but the area seems to be completely rebuilt with no obvious leftovers from Read). In its heyday, G. Rollie was the Reed Arena of the time, hosting graduations, the A&M basketball team, and some big acts in its day, including REM, Jimmy Buffett, and even Elvis Presley.

You can see the pictures of Read and G. Rollie I took on Flickr.

As a bonus, here's an article from October 1985 detailing renovations to G. Rollie, which was probably done in conjunction with the Read Building expansion.


You can see the pre-renovated arena here.

Read Building wasn't much to look at, as it was cleverly disguised as part of Kyle Field.




You could see into Read in this September 2013 picture.


Minor updates in November 2019


Saturday, November 3, 2012

University Apartments and Century Square

Trendy mixed-use right in the heart of the city! (Picture by author, 2/20)


This post was originally written as "University Apartments", which focused on the group of university-owned apartments that were largely torn down around 2014 for what we now know as Century Square. Initially, I had no interest in covering Century Square as I had updated the post to my standards at the time to wrap up the site (it's why there's an eight month gap between the last 2014 post and the first 2015 post). As a result, this covers the predecessor of Century Square, the University Apartments, first, and we'll progress to the present day and the current occupier of the site.

During my time at A&M, I was thankful that I had enough sense to photograph many buildings on their way out in terms of demolition or extensive renovation. I didn't get enough pictures of the old Scoates Hall, and no inside shots of Dulie Bell, but did get pictures of The Commons, Zachry Engineering Center, Read Building, G. Rollie White, and of course, these.

When making this post originally (or at least doing a significant update), I had done research at Cushing Memorial Library, which refers to Battalion articles that aren't available to be linked. Some of the links that were available, dating from the mid-2000s have been removed from the Battalion's webpage (with no Archive.org to rescue them, I didn't have enough sense back then to archive my links).

Originally rows and rows of two-level Army-style barracks filling up the diagonal-row roads in the early 1950s, with two complexes, College View and Southside, a federal grant in 1957 (to the tune of 2.5 million dollars, which would be about 20 million today) allowed more to be built.

From what I could tell, the original College View Apartments were Army-style barracks filling up the diagonal-row roads east of Northgate built in the early 1950s (at the same time Southside was built, which appeared to have been at the northeast corner of Wellborn and modern-day George Bush Drive, more on that another day).

In 1960, the Hensel Apartments (later Hensel Terrace Apartments) were built, and originally not air-conditioned (until likely the 1970s). The new College View Apartments, built in 1969, were built facing FM 60 and according to The Battalion were "cool, comfortable, and complete", being climate controlled at 70 degrees.

Interestingly, despite the new College View apartments replacing the old College View buildings on a 1:1 basis, only about 7 buildings were built. Nearly 30 others were torn down (a few lasting into the early 1980s, a footnote at a document called "Brazos Valley Chronology" at Project HOLD, mentions the last of these were removed in 1982) without replacement, and until the Century Square development, those spaces remained vacant, possibly due to lack of funding. The back 13 were redeveloped into Avenue A Apartments on a 1:1 replacement, but it was still a lot of vacant space. The 1970s also saw the construction of College Avenue Apartments, which were directly across College Avenue from University Square Shopping Center.

As time went on, the Married Student Housing became known as the "University Apartments", as it started to become known for international students as well. The maintenance of the apartments declined and the roads started to deteriorate, but there wasn't any major trouble. Piecemeal improvements were made to the complex, including the addition of the Becky Gates Children's Center, a 1997 addition on Hensel that would have childcare for students married with children. Later on a community center and playground were built as well. However, it was an incident in 2004 that did change the University Apartments forever.

One day in July 2004, residents complained about a smell of natural gas in the Hensel Terrace Apartments. The maintenance worker responded but decided to not repair the leak until the next week (in fact, they told residents to close their windows, thus making the smell inside worse). Saquib Ejaz, a resident of those apartments, lived with his wife and daughter at Hensel Apartments. His parents were visiting from Bangladesh. While his parents, wife (who was pregnant with another child), and daughter were home, the gas somehow ignited and fire consumed the apartment's interior, severely burning all four. His wife and father survived, but his daughter and mother did not. Other apartments were damaged, as well, however; the structure itself survived.

Lawsuits were filed, and by 2005, a number of new improvements were announced, including new stoves, new detectors, and much better maintenance. This still wasn't "enough" maintenance, as the apartment complex was still falling apart, with the College Avenue Apartments on Ball Street having unleveled floors.

However, by fall 2006, a plan was approved to add the Gardens at University, which, instead of building it on vacant land, would replace the existing apartments. When I first wrote this article in 2012, the College Avenue Apartments had been demolished in 2011 (without replacement), and two-thirds of the Hensel Terrace Apartments (including the rebuilt apartments where Ejaz's apartment was) had been torn down for the Gardens. Nothing else had been altered since then.

In early 2013 "Campus Pointe", a long-planned redevelopment of the area, was trotted out again and approved. This would essentially lease the university's land to a private developer, becoming one of the few shopping malls built on property leased from a university (Stanford Shopping Center is another example).

College View Apartments, Hensel Terrace Apartments, and Avenue A Apartments were marked for destruction--all residents had to move out. There were even stories of the mattresses being moved out first, so many had to make do with sleeping on the floor, and a new field designated for playing cricket (popular as most of the residents came from overseas) had to be closed. Despite (presumably) assistance, the apartments all near campus had much higher rent, and both Northgate and Southgate had undergone some degree of gentrification.

While The Gardens, the daycare, and the maintenance building were not affected and still stand, the demolition for redevelopment seemed to take a long time, for months, the abandoned apartments (speckled with graffiti) stood, then for many more months with just vacant land. Sometime during all of this, Campus Pointe was renamed to Century Square.

A friend and I took these in May 2013, soon before eviction in summer 2013 (the picture at the title is also from that):

Nobody's home.

Avenue A Apartments, which has eight units per building, four of which are seen here.

There is so much open space here, great for large group games or tossing a Frisbee around. Too bad this will go away...


College View Apartments. These face University Drive.

Hensel Terrace Apartments. Most of these are already gone, including the unit that exploded in 2004. It's worth noting that the building wasn't actually destroyed. The apartments have concrete foundations and despite being old and run-down, are better built then similar apartment complexes of the same era.


The Gardens at University Apartments. These will stick around.

Interesting vents on the University Apartments Maintenance Building.

For the next few years, the entire area was gated off as new construction began to take over, opening as Century Square.

The center would open in phases, with many of the restaurants coming in-line by fall 2017 (the hotels opened sooner). I haven't actually been to most of what Century Square has to offer...the parking is a major issue, in an effort to be more like Houston high-end development, the developers instituted paid parking everywhere except the garage (which also once had a strict time limit for staying).

The "mall space" is composed of a bunch of buildings floating in parking lots. As the way I'm going to explain it is going to be confusing, I recommend you look at the PDF directory to understand the layout. It's an archived version, and will go increasingly out of date as time goes on, but the link should stay up.

1025 University Drive - Located at the corner of the development, closest to the College Drive/University intersection, this building has, from left to right, Mo's Irish Pub, Orangetheory Fitness, Sharetea, Merge Boutique, Clean Juice, and Piada Street Food. I ate at Mo's Irish Pub once—airy, modern space, cute waitresses, but average food with only a few token "Irish" dishes. Clean Juice doesn't seem to show up in the directory anymore as of this writing, though, so it might be closed.

1099 University Drive - This is almost the same building as 1025 University Drive except there's a covered open-air walkway between them. This building has three tenants, Velvet Taco (opened September 2021 and the former home to Runway Seven, a women's clothing store, which closed sometime in 2019 after about two years), Tiff's Treats, and Zoë's Kitchen.

1027 University Drive - Directly behind the 1025/1099 building is 1027, a two-story building that wraps around the parking garage. This is where Star Cinema Grill is, located on the upper level (I have yet to visit it). The lower level is mostly vacant, with only Harvest Coffee and a second local location of I Heart Mac and Cheese (opened September 2020). The largest store in the block is College Station's own lululemon athletica store, with its pricey, brand-name yoga pants. Next to that is Grass Stains, a specialty boutique with its only location here (the original location in Graham, Texas has since closed).

166 Century Court - Directly east of the preceding building, 166 Century Court is a multi-story office building ("Century Square Two") with three retail tenants currently on the ground floor--Onward Reserve (opened November 2019), King Ranch Saddle Shop and Hemline, a women's clothing boutique out of New Orleans. In December 2020, a "selfie museum", Instaland BCS, opened next to Onward Reserve, with Luchesse Bootmaker opening north of it soon after.

144 Century Court - To the east of the preceding building. Hopdoddy Burger Bar, Hey Sugar, and Sabi Boutique, are all located here. Sabi Boutique opened in April 2019 as their second location. The boutique had maintained a storefront at The Lofts at Wolf Pen Creek for years, but they moved that location to University Drive East within a few months , meaning that they had two locations on the same road less than a mile away from each other. It is not listed on Century Square's website anymore. Yelp says the location is closed, while Sabi Boutique's Facebook page just reports that on May 2020, the Century Square store would remain "temporarily" closed. The other two places, Hopdoddy and Hey Sugar I've never bought anything from, and I have some less-than-flattering impressions that I could tell you about, but it would be bad form to disparage open businesses.

143 Century Court - The "mirror" of the preceding building to the east, on the other side of The Green (an open space for outdoor events and al fresco dining) has three more tenant spaces: Blaze Pizza, Sub Zero Nitrogen Ice Cream (closed as of February 2020, and has yet to be retenanted), and Sweet Paris Crêperie & Café. I've never been to Sweet Paris but I do know of it since it had replaced the Rice Village location of Texadelphia (a fact mentioned in our Texadelphia post).

175 Century Square Drive - The only retail tenant below the Century Square One office building is Galleria Spa Salon, formerly Galleria Day Spa (for years it used to be at the corner of Cavitt Drive and Villa Maria Drive, until it moved to Rock Prairie, which is still there). The office tenants include Breakaway Ministries, UBS Financial Services, and BRW Architects.

Going counterclockwise around toward the back are two boutique hotels, "The George" (with "1791 Whiskey Bar" inside), which opened August 2017, and Cavalry Court, which opened November 2016 (one of the first tenants) with its "The Canteen" restaurant. Despite being a four-star hotel with off-season prices being around $120 a night, all the rooms open to the outside.

Directly behind The Green was Poppy (named after the late Bush 41's nickname). Sometime right around very early 2020 before you-know-what happened, Poppy closed for an upscale Mexican concept (to be named Juanitas), but seeing as 2020 has been atrocious to restaurants, it remains empty (though is still planned). West of the former Poppy is Porters Dining + Butcher, a high-end (well, at least for College Station) steakhouse.

170 Century Square Drive - Finally, to the east of the complex is 100 Park, an apartment building that fits into the whole modern "mixed-use" concept, though not oriented toward students. At the bottom of this apartments include Pokéworks (opened January 2020) and MESS Waffles, which opened October 2018. This used to be known as Wafology, which was mentioned at the 711 University Drive article.

1289 University Drive - The first tenant to come...and go...Neighbors Emergency Center opened in October 2016 but closed around August 2016. This opened in October 2016 as Neighbors Emergency Center, a private 24-hour care emergency clinic that was the first open tenant in the Century Square development. However, it closed within about 10 months. In November 2018, CapRock Urgent Care opened in its place, and in spring 2021, became Integrity Urgent Care as CapRock sold off most of its facilities.

UPDATE 01-04-2021: After adding Century Square in the fourth edit version to this page in February 2020, the fifth edit to this page includes some tenant changes and other minor fixes.
UPDATE 07-10-2021: Minor updates, but the only thing of note was Integrity Urgent Care (CapRock sold).
UPDATE 12-13-2021: Added Velvet Taco and minor update regarding Poppy, as well as UBS.

Sunday, January 22, 2012

Special Services Building

Besides the rare snow, I couldn't find a picture of this building that wasn't decades old.


Does anyone remember the Special Services Building? It was just north of Haas Residence Hall in the northwest part of campus, and from data on the Internet, razed in fall 2001. (It sits about where the basketball courts of the Hullabaloo Residence Hall now stand).

Unfortunately, we have little information of this building. It was at least three stories tall and references on the Internet mention offices being located there. But what was it? "Special Services" is a rather vague term: I've heard it had laundry facilities (actually a branded operation of FabricCare Cleaners that appeared to stay up until around 2001) in the past, but that's about it.

The main reason for demolition I remember it had creaking floors: so bad that it was deemed structurally unstable, with the furniture being abandoned.

However, the "Special Services Building" reportedly dates back to 1914 according to this TAMU chronology. Is that right? I mean, most of the buildings back then were made primarily of wood and would've been demolished by the 1960s or 1970s, and it would be a miracle that the SSB survived for that long.

According to "Truthfinder" (a commenter), I received this information.

It was home to the Department of Rural Sociology and the Texas State Data Center when it was torn down. Rural Sociology then moved off campus to the buildings left of Barnes and Noble.

The building was deemed unsafe because of large cracks in the structure. The walls in the basement had cracks at least 8 inches wide. Everything was packed up and moved out within a few days.

It was a very unique building because it once was a hospital. Grad student offices were in a the old tiled operating room. The floors were sloped with a large drain in the center. The departmental supply closet was lined with lead. There was an old fashioned gated elevator in the back of the building. The facade had several Corinthian columns.

The building was also home of one of the more famous campus ghost stories. An elderly professor who passed away at the hospital was supposed to haunt the hall of the main floor. He wore a bathrobe and slippers and could be heard shuffling up and down the hallway.

More photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cushinglibrary/sets/72157618490481476/


Updated July 2020 to incorporate 2012 comment