Radically Retired

Tag: Old Buildings

  • Iconic in the Valley

    Iconic in the Valley

    Pharr, Texas is four miles down the road from where we winter.

    Hubs’ favourite street in Pharr is Cage Blvd because of the iconic cowboy welcome sign that sits high above the entry to the street. Hubs says it reminds him of the famous neon “Welcome to Vegas” cowboy.

    My fave spot is up a couple of blocks on the corner of Cage Blvd and Kelly Ave.

    Although weathered and missing an A on one side of its tall vertical column sign, this place just begged to be researched

    The long vacant Texan Hotel and Chung Mei Kitchen restaurant has always intrigued me.

    Through looking for some history of the hotel, I learned that the welcome to Pharr cowboy originally sat on top of the Texan Hotel sign.

    Web Image

    In 1984, Du Ong Lee, long time owner of the hotel and restaurant was featured in a local newspaper.

    Now, it’s my mission to visit the Pharr Memorial Library. Isn’t it funny how once we start researching, one curiosity often leads to another?

    It was fun to learn that the two things that hubs and I love most about Pharr have a strong connection.

  • No Final Verdict

    No Final Verdict

    A couple of weeks ago, we drove past this once regal, but now old and dilapidated house in Edinburg, Texas.

    When I took the photo into Google Lens … Ai assist (which is wrong over 50% of the time), identified it as “The Closner House”, built by John Closner, an early developer and political figure in the area.

    The house is located on Closner Rd, which is likely where ai got things twisted.

    I then Googled the Closner house and added -ai to my search (this brings up a few more reputable sources before the ai assist answers), and the image that came up looked like an entirely different house.

    Further research took me to a Facebook page where people were asking about the house in my feature photo.

    Some said it was the Stephens house while others corrected that to Stevens, but attributed different occupations to the different spellings of the surname. Some said it was the Closner house (likely after an ai-assisted Google search). This was corrected by others in the group who said that the Closner house built by John Closner was at a different location.

    The jury is definitely out on this one, so I guess I’ll just leave it to imagination of what this house was like in its heyday.