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.

Kreuz Market (Lockhart, Texas)

Kreuz Market as seen from the road on Google Street View.
The ongoing dismantling of the Lockhart page has reached Kreuz Market, one of Lockhart's famous barbecue restaurants (619 N. Colorado Street). Kreuz Market has been part of Lockhart for over a century and its current building opened in 1999 looks like a modern, tourist-friendly location, looking more like a Rudy's rather than a "real" barbecue joint. The new location opened with much fanfare, notably with the publicity stunt of physically dragging a bucket of the hot coals of the old location to the new location.

When I first visited it in the late 2000s (shortly after a railroad overpass was built, cutting off direct access from US-183), it famously bragged that unlike most barbecue joints, it had no sauce and no forks...which was, okay I guess. On the forks issue, sure they didn't have forks when they started way back when but they didn't have proper sanitation either, so it's a bit of a wash. But forks are necessary when eating. You can't do it with plastic knives and spoons (which were provided, no metal utensils). The sauce? You could make, say, a great hamburger or French fries without any condiments, but to say that there's no sauce implies that your food is that good. Spoiler alert: it wasn't.

In the end, Kreuz Market did change its long-standing policy. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not. On one hand, it was poorly implemented and quite pretentious, on the other hand, it did give it a bit of uniqueness.

They mention the Bryan location and its decision to have no sauce or forks (before reversing the position), and while I did have a mention of it on Carbon-izer at one time, it will be (hopefully) soon revived for an all-new post at Brazos Buildings & Businesses.

Former Burger King (Tulsa, Oklahoma)

From Loopnet, archived here for posterity. I researched this odd restaurant at 2030 South Sheridan Road, Tulsa, Oklahoma a while back. On the surface, it appears to be a former Burger King...which it was, but there are other odd things about it that suggest there's more to the story. Digging through newspaper archives, this has been through many restaurants, some chain stores and some not. From what I can piece together this opened as Sambo's in 1977 until the early 1980s when the chain collapsed. By 1982 it was Barry's Deli (Jewish-style deli restaurant, open 24 hours) and in 1986 became Hardee's. In the early 1990s it closed and was replaced by Rex's Chicken (local restaurant chain), by 2000 it was closed and reopened as Burger King in 2001. It closed between 2019 and 2021 and was replaced by King Burrito (closed as of May 2025, and still closed now as of this writing). Unfortunately, when I typed all that out I didn't save the articles that supported that evidence, but they're there, and I could add it later. Until then...

Old Woodlawn High School (St. George, Louisiana)

The original photos posted on Carbon-izer weren't very good so I enhanced this one a bit. (Picture by author, June 2004).
As Numbered Exits is essentially a spin-off of Carbon-izer, it features a number of stuff that was originally there. One of the pages that never got to be published was on Baton Rouge. I'm still working on bringing a few things from over there to here (of what I wrote, only this is sourced from that page. Unlike Hi Nabor, which wasn't on the way to the house (but ads of which were scattered in the kitchen), Woodlawn High School (the original one) was. (Good thing I didn't publish it due to the whole St. George thing).

Originally located at the corner of Jones Bridge Road and Tiger Bend Road, this high school was a landmark when visiting my uncle's house east of it and a notable landmark on Tiger Bend Road for many years, even after its c. 2001-2002 widening (which ended at around the point of Woodlawn High School). The original school dated back to 1910 as Jones Creek School, renamed Seventh Ward School in 1911, and renamed again as Woodlawn High School around 1949 (presumably becoming high school only by this time).

The physical state of the school at 14939 Tiger Bend Road was deteriorating by the late 1990s (even if that article was sensationalized, it's not a good picture) and in 2003, the new Woodlawn High School opened at 15755 Jefferson Highway, and the old school was torn down in summer 2004. I know because I took pictures and published them on Carbon-izer. Woodlawn Middle School was later built on the site.

Tiger Bend Road itself was also not in the best shape, either, until around 2002-2003, this was Tiger Bend Road between Jefferson Highway and Jones Bridge Road (this is a cut-off portion where you can still see the original road, though the center stripe was removed).

This section is pretty close to my memory since the rest of it looks pretty different...and I don't have access to Baton Rouge newspaper archives.