Houston Midtown Sears Closes

Today Marked the end of an era for retail in Houston. Sears, the last department store in the central part of the city closed its doors. Opened in 1939, the Art Moderne building tat 4201 Main Street at Wheeler Avenue replaced the original 1929 store at 2321 Allen Parkway at Montrose Boulevard. Sears, Roebuck, and Company moved to the Main Street location in the wake of the catastrophic 1935 flooding that left much of the Central Business District under water. The Allen Parkway site housed the Baylor College of Medicine in the 1940s and later became Robinson Public Warehouse, a storage facility before finally being demolished by the Aga Khan Foundation in 2006.

In the 1960s, the Sears building was covered in tin siding and its display windows were bricked over to give the building a more contemporary look. When I came to Houston to study at the University of St. Thomas in 1999, Midtown - the area of Houston where Sears is located - was in flux. Parts of looked like a demilitarized zone where where shuttered businesses stood awaiting their fate. Sears sat at the end of Main Street that led into the Museum District. It was surrounded by stores and restaurants that had last seen its heyday in the boom years of the 1980s. Other parts were absorbed by Vietnamese immigrants who arrived here in the late 70s and early 80s and carved out an area known as Little Saigon. In some pockets, LGBT-friendly clubs like the Venture-N and the Brazos River Bottom made their home.

In the 2000s, Prince's Drive-In, United Jewelers, and Popeye's were razed to make way for the light rail stop Wheeler Station. The jewelry store, movie theater, and McDonald's across the street were later demolished to make way for future development. Midtown started to see a renaissance of sorts, but Sears still remained in the same spot. At one point its existence was threatened by the proposed light rail University Line that would run from the University of Houston to the Hillcroft Transit Center. Ironically, Sears became a victim of its own success.

In the 1980s Sears ruled the malls and Kmart ruled the suburbs. Then, in 2002, Kmart filed for bankruptcy as it ran up against competition from Walmart and Target, who had adapted to changing consumer habits. Sears, Roebuck, and Company could not have prepared itself enough for the coming onslaught of online retailing. In 2005, the two merged and became Sears Holdings Inc.  Consumers could now find  Sears products in Kmart stores and vice versa. As the buzz around the merger subsided, the figures made it clear that the the newly formed company still continued to struggle. 

Then, in 2017, Sears Holdings announced that it would close both Kmart and Sears stores. Many cried retail apocalypse as the announcement came in the wake of other retail bankruptcies. Many of the locations were stores that had already been identified as under-performing. Houston was spared in the first round of closings, but a new list emerged in May 2017 that included Westwood Mall location, much of which already had shuttered in the late 90s, and its Baybrook Mall location, a flourishing suburban mall in Webster, Tex. Sears' Midtown location had been spared . Then in October last year, the company announced another round of closings.that included West Oaks Mall, a struggling center on the far western edge of Houston and its Midtown location.

In the current renaissance of Midtown, much of the development has shifted from the eastern side to the western side as the eastern edge of Montrrose fills up with trendy restaurants and shops. Sears and its surrounding three acres sit in the middle now, poised to became a touchstone for future development. That particular part of Midtown bridges the confluence of Third Ward, the Museum District, and The Montrose. Nearby developers have erected mid-rise apartments and mixed-use sites that incorporate urban living and shopping on the same property. Most notably is a Whole Foods that will stand on Elgin Street between Smith and Bagby..

For the Sears property, its days as a department store have ended, but the possibilities for its future use are endless. My hope is that the site can be preserved and brought back ti its former glory maybe for mixed retail. Unfortunately today's efforts to capture Sears' last day in business failed when I was asked by Metro Houston Police to delete my photos. I was told that I had to go through public relations if I wanted to get pictures of the store. Being an amateur blogger and photographer, I complied, but I was able to salvage a couple of shots, and I've included them. One is a painting of Sam Houston that hung in the stairwell. It commemorates Texas' Centennial in 1936. The other is a shot from across Eagle Street of the building as it looked today. Yet again, another piece of Houston's history becomes a memory, something to tell future generations about. 

Eagle Street view of Sears

The Sam Houston painting in the stairwell