For more than 20 years, my family and I have vacationed in Texas. Weird, I know. It started when we adventured on a road trip from Mexico City to Laredo, Texas. All 16 hours of it. On ensuing trips we started driving a little further into the state, first to San Antonio, then Austin, and once all the way to Houston. Fifteen years ago, American products were not available in Mexico, blockbuster movies arrived three months after the U.S. premieres and the commercials on TV were far superior to the under budgeted Mexican ads, so for me those trips were a real treat. I especially remember seeing Robocop in one of them, and eating gummy worms and nonpareils out of the same bag. Eventually as we all grew up and my dad didn’t have the same drive of driving screaming teenagers across countries we started flying. Then I moved to the U.S. and then my parents decided to keep an apartment in Houston as their home away from home. Bryony and I have visited a couple of times, and just two weeks ago we were there, baby in tow. Besides seeing my parents, one of my recurring favorite things about Houston is a shopping strip, The River Oaks Shopping Center, set in a palm tree-flanked stretch of three blocks. I don’t care about the stores particularly, or the palm trees, or the ample parking… It’s the stores’ signage and awnings that captivate me: They are all black.
Now, this may not sound like much to you — and, indeed, there are more exciting things in life than this — but there is a subtle, welcome, and almost magical shift in the visual environment as you drive into, and through, this center. Whether you enter from the main entrance or from the end, the shift is first imperceptible and then unequivocal. After miles and miles of strip malls featuring every conceivable store in the world, all with their own logos in big, flashing, colorful letters and faux-whatever style of architecture they are trying to convey, entering a space with single-level, beige-colored buildings with logos and store names set in a strict palette of black and white can lead you to think you have suddenly gone color blind. It’s almost as if you stepped into Pleasantville, especially if you consider the rare Art Deco buildings that the shopping center occupies.
Photos: Pedro Vit… Yup, my dad
Photo: William R. Jenkins Architecture and Art Library, University of Houston
The River Oaks Shopping Center gets its name from the posh neighborhood it resides in, River Oaks — a section of Houston where the average household income in a 1-mile radius is above $100,000 a year, houses start at $1,000,000 and pretty is the best adjective to describe it. The center was built in the late 1930s, and it featured a car-friendly design set in a half circle, divided by Gray Street, that established the low-key look that the center’s expansion in 1948 would then embrace with two more Art Deco buildings. While Houston doesn’t emanate major whiffs of noteworthy architecture, it does boast a comprehensive collection of lovely Art Deco buildings that, set against the expansive openness of the city, stand out from all the big box retailers and other non-descript buildings. As the center expanded and welcomed retail heavyweights like Gap, Sur La Table and Gymboree as well as supergrocerystore Kroger, it would have been easy to let them take over the buildings with highly visible signage oozing blues, reds, oranges and every other color under the rainbow. Instead, as what I can only imagine being a result of a rule in the lease agreements from some color mastermind, all signage is restrained to white logo(type)s on black awnings. A small effort in the preservation of the original design of The River Oaks Shopping Center. And, unexpectedly for residents and retail owners, preservation has become a palpable concern as it faces the loss of two of its most iconic buildings and it would be the second vintage theater to face extinction.
River Oaks (photo by laanba) and Alabama Theaters
The River Oaks Theater, dedicated to foreign and independent films, and the Alabama Theater, located a few blocks away from the center, housing a Bookstop since 1989 after closing in 1983, are threatened to be demolished and replaced by condos and parking, not respectively. In other words something that brings in money. As clearly, nostalgia and well-maintained examples of classic architecture do not pay the bills for Weingarten Realty, the developer that owns the center. Certainly, Houstonians, including my parents, are upset. Petitions have been petitioned and the buildings have been placed on preservation endangered lists. The other building in the center that might be in trouble is one of the original curved entrances of the center, where Barnes & Noble, who owns the Bookstop in the Alabama Theater, is planning to erect a new store there. As the rendering below shows, B&N plans to keep a small part of the original building and then create the tallest structure in the three blocks of the center. And it looks like it might even honor the Black Rule with their logo set in black against white, instead of the green/cream/red combination they usually employ.
Rendering of future Barnes & Noble. [Click image for bigger view]
While the possibility of change looms over the neighborhood and the historic buildings continue to make the news, there is one more highlight to be gleaned from this small patch of Texas: The River Oaks Shopping Center houses two Starbucks… one directly in front of the other.
Google Map with the two Starbucks circled
In Manhattan we may shudder at the sight of Starbucks separated by two or three city blocks and we host more than 170 of them — as proven by this brave soul — but the one bragging right we don’t have is of two Starbucks being as close together as the width of a four-lane street. Comedian Lewis Black was so startled by this, that these two Starbucks represented the end of the Universe. Per the rendering above, we can see that the Starbucks on the B&N lot will be preserved. If the giant bookseller follows its own tradition, there will likely be a Starbucks coffee in B&N, giving a single corner in the world three Starbucks.
Lewis Black on the two Starbucks
I don’t know when I will be back in Houston for a visit, and as much as I like my daily Starbucks, I fear that that will be the only thing left to see in the black, white and beige respite that The River Oaks Shopping Center offered us.
Thank you for taking me back to The River Oaks Shopping Center, I used to live in a lovely little cul-de-sac behind the Center and got to see first hand the changes and the consistency of the design which is a rarity in Houston. One little corrrection, the Bookstop is actually not in the Center its about ten blocks down Shepherd (the Center starts at West Grey and Shepherd) on the other side of Westheimer near West Alabama. But it would be a shame to lose it, as has happened so many times before. Unfortunately there is very little sense of history in Houston, but they still have a wonderful skyline filled by some of the world's leading architeccts including I.M. Pei and Philip Johnson.
On Jul.26.2007 at 10:57 AM