Ritter Hardware Beaumont (Beaumont, Texas)

Picture from Google Maps, from Max Morgan, 2016
Another one to add to the growing collection of entries on Highway 105 is Ritter Hardware. Opened July 2009 from a news article that I have since lost (though the company's website confirms it is 2009), the large store (for an independent) is located a ways off its address, 7420 Highway 105, and is off Windermere Parkway (Home Center Drive never did develop). Somewhere around the mid-2010s they ditched their original association with Ace Hardware and by the early 2020s remerchandised to remove flooring (which they previously had advertised).

dd's Discounts On Antoine (Houston, Texas)

Google Maps Street View crop. If you look closely there's ridged concrete, very similar to old Kmart stores.
Spinning off another Antoine Drive entry, this particular address (8077 Antoine Drive) started out as Eagle Discount Supermarket (see Houston Historic Retail) before it closed in 1985. It was later taken over by Houston independent Foodarama before it moved in 2006 to the former Randalls at 7320 Antoine Drive, which Houston Historic Retail has covered in more detail. In 2011 it became DD's Discounts.

The rest of the shopping center doesn't have much going for it (beauty supply, daycare, FOUR cheap cell phone stores). The TitleMax Title Loans in the parking lot (8197 Antoine Drive) suggests a fast food past (most TitleMax places are in fact former fast food restaurants) but this one appears to have been a State Farm office back in the 1980s, and upon closer inspection the way the windows are built, and no drive-through/convenient parking seems to confirm the case.

Pueblo's County Market (Pueblo, Colorado)

This was a grocery store in 1984. source
1545 S. Prairie Avenue in Pueblo, Colorado is currently vacant and I researched this as part as working on the Albertsons History page (it is the first post on this site for Colorado). It originally operated as Gibson's Discount Center from 1967 to 1981, and in March 1984 reopened as County Market. In 2000, it was sold to Albertsons, which reopened it as "Grocery Warehouse", a concept similar to Max Foods elsewhere (why not Max Foods, I have no idea) and rebranded as Albertsons in 2009 under Albertsons LLC. It featured a somewhat unique decor package and catered to a largely Hispanic base, but closed in 2018. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of what this store looked like on the inside.

KFC at Ella and North Loop (Houston, Texas)

From Google Maps, "Belly G.", with minor color touch-ups done.
Located at 1526 North Loop West (the northeast corner of North Loop and Ella), from the 1970s until around 2001-2002, this was a Shell (something that Houston retail historians would refer to as a "Hexashell" due to its roof canopy shape of three interconnected hexagons). In 2002 it was redeveloped as a KFC/A&W (and as of 2008 still featured the old Shell highway signage to advertise) but in the early 2010s was renovated, ditching the A&W co-brand due to the separation of A&W from KFC parent Yum! Brands. (This post was formerly part of this page and originally appeared on Carbon-izer.com).

Waco's Wyatt Food Store (Waco, Texas)

Kroger's lone stand in Waco was only for a year. It was not Kroger's only attempt in the Waco-Temple-Killeen area, though!
Have I got a story for you. It involves Kroger, H-E-B, Pancho's, and the Taliban, and it all goes back to an iconic arch.

In February 1961, Kroger opened its first Central Texas location of Wyatt Food Stores, a grocery chain based out of Dallas. Alongside this was Wyatt's Cafeteria, a restaurant chain which was owned by Earle Wyatt (having sold the supermarket chain to Kroger in 1958).¹ These held the addresses of 512 N. 20th Street and 510 N. 20th Street, respectively, though oftentimes the grocery store used the 510 address. A year later, however, Kroger announced it would be selling the Wyatt store to H-E-B, which changed over in March 1962² (replacing one of their smaller stores³, the merchandise from Wyatt was moved back to Dallas stores while H-E-B used one of theirs), ending Wyatt's Central Texas expansion. H-E-B continued to operate the store. Meanwhile, Wyatt's Cafeteria closed this location in 1969 and replaced by a Pancho's Mexican Buffet in 1970 (which did not last a year). H-E-B later absorbed the space, as the space was enormous, with 12,000 square feet of space (compared to the main store's 22k square feet, and in 1975 a 34k square feet supermarket was quite respectable). In October 1983, with the opening of a new store at 1428 Wooded Acres Drive, H-E-B shuttered the store for good, and that's how it would remain for the next 25 years. In 1985 there were plans to open a "tire warehouse and distribution center" on the site but neighborhood resistance caused the city to deny the request. Fast forward to 1999, when Antioch Community Church chose this site for their new church site. (A picture of the site as to how it appeared in 1998 is there).

Antioch briefly made national news when two of its missionaries were detained shortly before 9/11 in Afghanistan by the Taliban, and we know from articles at the time Antioch used the 510 address. By 2007, Antioch's building still resembled the old Wyatt/H-E-B, though no longer had braces for the lettering. Around 2012, the church began to build an expansion in front of the current building, deleting the Wyatt facade.⁴

But the arch persisted.

Located to the corner property and ground level (and briefly sporting some spots of paint from previous years gone by, with bits of red and blue paint toward the roofline), the arch stands near the corner of North 20th Street and Fort Avenue. Even if its original purpose is forgotten by many, it's heartwarming to see early 1960s retail architecture maintained and restored in some way. Below are a few other pictures and ads of relevance.

1. "Wyatt Food Store Opens Here Tuesday", Waco Tribune-Herald, February 12, 1961.
2. "H.E.B. Open At Wyatt Site Today", Waco News-Tribune, March 8, 1962.
3. This replaced a smaller H-E-B store at 18th Street and Austin Avenue.
4. At this point, the church also switched addresses to 505 N. 20th Street (occupying a former Sears Auto Center, which it also renovated).

Decaying Former Wendy's (Houston, Texas)

The post-Wendy's Loan Star, still in relatively good shape (Google Street View).
This article is part of the phase-out of "Crosstimbers Road and West Crosstimbers Road in Houston (Houston, Texas)" (soon to be a page on 1331 Crosstimbers Street) which was revived on Carbon-izer.com. This particular entry is on the Wendy's that was on Crosstimbers near I-45. It opened in 1985 and closed in 2013, becoming Loanstar Title Loans afterward. This was closed between November 2016 and May 2017, and boarded up soon after. Sadly, around 2020 the solarium (hidden behind plywood) was later completely removed.

It just gets worse...

And worse. This is what it looked like in 2011.

Lacy-Lakeview Safeway (Lacy-Lakeview, Texas)

Picture courtesy MCAD, used with permission.
Depicted above is the original Safeway of the Lacy-Lakeview area, originally with its address (at least according to tax records) as 110 E. Loop 340, and operated as a Safeway from 1976 to 1986. In 1986, the Safeway moved directly next door (you can see part of the supermarket building to the right) with the address of Safeway being 4501 Interstate 35 and this one being 4501 Interstate 35 North, and in 1990 reopened as Schulman 6 Lacy-Lakeview. In 2000, this theater closed and around 2014, the long-vacant building was torn down. Construction on the new plaza (originally Providence, later Ascension) began soon after, and opened in May 2017 as the Lacy-Lakeview Medical Plaza with a new address, 1130 N. Loop 340.

Meanwhile, the Safeway operated until 1989 when it was rebranded as AppleTree, and in 1992 the store (along with the other AppleTree in Waco at the time) was sold to Winn-Dixie, with AppleTree closing in July and reopening as Winn-Dixie a few months later. This was closed in 2002 when Winn-Dixie pulled out of the state. There it idled vacant (like the theater) for close to a decade until Atwoods finished its own remodel of the store and opened in January 2011. Atwoods (and the grocery stores before it) was 46,000 square feet but in 2021 Atwoods began an expansion that took the store up to 62,000 square feet.

This article's contents originally appeared on Carbon-izer.com.