A strange beginning for our newest feature, for sure.
812 Main Street is located in the CBD and was built in 1923. It is comprised of 10 floors, 7,100 square feet per floor. As of today, the building is almost completely vacant and has been for a considerable length of time. The building sits on 6,251 SF of land across from the 46-story Hines Mainplace, which is to open in 2011.
Sources indicate the 812 Main Street building was renovated in 2001. It includes 5 elevator banks and card key access.
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NEWS/BLOGS/HISTORY: (Houston Chronicle) – Buyers purchase Battelstein’s building / Investors plan to turn 10-story department store site into offices (1999)
The old Battelstein’s building, a mainstay of downtown retailing in decades gone by, has been sold to local investors.
The 10-story building, 812 Main, was once the primary store for the Battelstein’s department store chain. The downtown Battelstein’s store closed in 1980, when the chain was sold.
The vacant building’s new buyers, Aaron and Tony Wiese, plan to transform the building into office space.
The Battelstein’s store is one of a number of empty building shells that were left behind as retailers moved from downtown to the suburbs. The downtown stores of Walter Pye’s, Sakowitz, Norton Ditto and Woolworth have also been closed in the modern retailing era.
Battelstein’s owes its beginnings to Phillip Battelstein, a Lithuanian immigrant who founded Battelstein’s tailor shop in 1897 after coming to Houston with $4 in his pocket. When the store burned down in the late 1920s, Battelstein’s moved into the location at 812 Main.
Glass Steel and Stone – This is one of a number of skyscrapers that are peculiar in Houston. Most people who bother to erect a skyscraper in Texas want to show it off. They surround it with plazas, fountains, lights, or whatever in order to create pizzazz and draw in tenants. The Battelstein’s Building does not appear to go that route. It appears to have been constructed with very utilitarian purposes in mind, with a minimum of ornamentation perhaps to maximize the invested dollars.
Maximizing revenue was something that Battelstein’s founder, Philip Battelstein, knew a lot about. He arrived in the United States in 1897 with just a few dollars in his pocket. Within 20 years, he was in command of one of the largest department stores in Houston.
That his investment was lost in the fierce retail wars that developed in downtown Houston in the mid-20th century, leaving this building virtually abandoned just a few decades later. In essence, Battelstein’s lost the battle.
ARCHITECT: Designed by Joseph Finger & George Rustay – Finger’s public buildings of the 1930s and 1940s were also designed in the modernistic style. Among the prominent clients for whom Finger designed multiple buildings, for both personal and business use, were the industrialist Henry M. Tennison, the confectioner W. H. Irvin, the merchant Philip Battelstein and his sons, the grocer Joseph Weingarten and his brothers, and the oil operator James M. West and his sons and business associates.
CURRENT OWNER: Per Wiese Properties –
The property has 6,250 square feet of land. The building has ten stories plus a basement with approximately 73,060 square feet. There are five elevators and asbestos abatement has been completed.
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Robert S. “Bob” Lowery – Corporate Real Estate Group
