Houston Lost and Unbuilt by Steven Strom

Author:Steven Strom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2010-03-17T04:00:00+00:00

Interior of Battlestein’s Department Store, 2010 South Shepherd, ca. 1950. This suburban Battlestein’s was designed by Joseph Finger who also designed earlier downtown incarnations of Battlestein’s. The store’s interior was reminiscent of Foley’s Department Store, which opened in 1947. (Courtesy Bob Bailey Studios Photographic Archive, CN 11923, The Center for American History, The University of Texas.)

— Sears, Roebuck and Co. Store —

THE FIRST MAJOR department store built outside of Houston’s downtown area was the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Department Store, located at Montrose and Allen Parkway. The store opened in 1926 but was vacated after water reached the store’s second floor during the destructive 1935 flood. Sears then moved to a location on South Main. For many years the building served as a storage warehouse, but in its final days, it stood forlornly at the edge of a major apartment complex, the Bel Air, completed in 2006. The building of the complex was another element of a large-scale attempt by real estate interests to redevelop the beautiful acreage along Allen Parkway between downtown and the beginning of River Oaks. The old Sears store’s proximity to the new wave of development placed it in great danger of being demolished, although the owners publicly claimed that they wanted to adapt the building for reuse rather than destroy it. In 2007, the building was finally demolished.

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