A downtown Houston eyesore reveals gorgeous past. Will it be hidden again?
For the past two decades, Main Food Store, at the now glitzy corner of Main and Lamar, stood as a stubborn reminder of downtown Houston’s roughest, ugliest decades. But this week, as workers removed midcentury “slipcover” panels hiding its second floor, they revealed — at least temporarily — beautifully preserved details of the building’s 1926 Spanish Renaissance Revival facade.
Now preservationists are scrambling to keep the historical facade visible. “It does look good under those ugly panels,” Preservation Houston’s Jim Parsons exulted.
Iqbal Mohammed, who has owned the store since 2000, says that he plans to replace the slipcover’s travertine panels, which were failing, and recover the second floor with a new modern facade. “I don’t have enough funds to restore it,” he said. “I checked into it, but it’s very expensive.”
The two-story building, designed by Joseph Finger, opened in 1927 as Rouse Drug Store. Its windows were ringed by glazed terra cotta acanthus leaves. Medallions and Corinthian pilasters festooned it. Above the secondstory arched window, a clock displayed the time.
Finger designed many of Houston’s most significant buildings of his era: among them City Hall, Congregation Beth Israel Temple and the terminal and hangar at Houston’s first airport (now the 1940 Air Terminal Museum at Hobby Airport).
In 1937, the building on Main became Everitt-Buelow Clothiers, a swank department store. But in the ’50s and ’60s, both ornate facades and downtown itself fell out of fashion. Retailers fled to the suburbs, and on Main, new “modern” plain fronts replaced many buildings’ Victorian, Classical Revival and Art Deco faces.
It’s not clear exactly when or why the old Rouse Drug Store building was remodeled, but the first floor was completely modernized, stripping away the building’s original ornaments. They survived, though, on the second floor, whose arched windows and clock gave way to a plain, flat expanse of travertine panels — likely used as a billboardlike space for a store’s sign.
In 2014, writing for the Houston Review, architect Paul Homeyer rejoiced that his visit to Main Food Store’s second floor revealed that its original arched steel-sash casement windows had not only survived underneath the travertine panels, but that there was a protective 16-inch gap between the building’s original facade and the new stone panels. Almost certainly the building’s ornate details were still there, intact.
Tuesday preservationists and denizens of Reddit Houston were delighted to see that was true. Parsons, of Preservation Houston, went to Main Food Store and spoke briefly to Iqbal, who seemed receptive but was busy serving customers. “It’s safe to say we’ll be back in touch,” Parsons said.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Iqbal said that he was already aware of tax credits available for historical preservation. But using such tax funds to restore a building requires the owner to have the money upfront, he said — money that he doesn’t have.
“If somebody can provide the funds,” he said, “I’m happy to restore it.”
The store’s owner says he plans to replace the slipcover’s travertine panels and recover the second floor with a modern facade but is ‘if somebody can provide the funds,’ he’d restore what’s been uncovered.