THE TEXICAN
A haunting look at memories that flood downtown’s old Spaghetti Warehouse space.
The new owner of the ornate safe inside the old Spaghetti Warehouse doesn’t know how to pull it out of the old, flooded Italian restaurant.
“He’s been on the phone since 9 a.m.,” laughs Steve Tomlin with online auction house RestaurantEquipment.bid. He’s on-site making sure winning bidders get the goods they purchased.
The lucky buyer is sitting in a running Chevy Silverado calling local movers to see if they can pull a 5,000-pound safe from inside the derelict downtown eatery, now mostly gutted.
“I might just have to forget about it,” the buyer says. “I don’t even know what I would do with it.” He declines to give his name because he says his boss thinks he’s working remotely today and not plotting to retrieve a safe out of a mildewy restaurant.
Spaghetti Warehouse’s shell, sitting just off Buffalo Bayou, was teeming with life earlier this month. After being flooded out by Hurricane Harvey, the chain decided to put the salvageable items inside it up for auction.
The Dallas-based Spaghetti Warehouse chain isn’t leaving Houston, but they are walking away from the 901 Commerce location after Harvey’s nasty flooding. The building has never had good luck with floodwaters.
Buyers of the discarded furnishings and kitchen equipment are responsible for all the disconnection and removal of the items purchased, so Tomlin is really just there to make sure people get what they paid for and direct the proceedings.
There is a team taking apart an antique replica trolley car on the second floor. Houstonians once dined inside of it, staring down at glass-topped tables with old Bayou City photos under the glass. A perplexed crew is working on finding a way to remove an old chandelier hanging over what was once the hostess desk.
That hefty antique Mosler safe, built for the now-defunct Melissa State Bank, has likely been there in the building since before it was even a restaurant. The bank went kaput in 1911, according to state records.
It has notations on the side where employees have written down various flooding events that have plagued Spaghetti Warehouse and how long it was closed. Allison (closed three months), Rita (four days), Ike (nine days), the 2016 Tax Day flood (three days). There is no notation for Harvey as it’s self-explanatory. It would have served its last plate of lasagna just before Harvey came knocking on Houston’s door in late August, eventually sending was appears to be at least 5 feet of water into the building.
When I tell Tomlin of the ghostly lore surrounding the location, he laughs as if I have just solved one of those Lone Star beer cap puzzles. “Well, now some of what has happened makes sense,” Tomlin says.
The first day he was here getting the contents of the restaurant ready for customers, he felt as if he being watched. At first he thought that maybe a transient had made themselves at home somewhere inside. After clearing the building and not finding a living soul, he still felt like he was being observed.
“You know when you can tell someone is watching you? It’s something like that,” Tomlin says.
The restaurant opened in 1973, but the building had a long and varied life before that. Built around 1912, it was the site of a fruit and vegetable warehouse and later a pharmaceutical company.
As the story goes, a young pharmacist died after falling down the elevator shaft. The pharmacist’s wife was so distraught, she died less than a year later and came here looking for him. The pair of ghosts are now said to haunt the building.
Some people eating there over the years reported seeing floating objects and cold spots even during heatwaves. Employees spoke of strange sightings on the second floor, even hearing their names called when no one else was around. Apparently, a male spirit shuffled around the restroom. Sometimes child ghosts were heard running around the building making mischief after closing time.
No word on whether the ghosts come with the auction items.
“Whatever happens once you get home is all on you,” Tomlin says with a laugh.