Seabrook residents mourn impending doom of unique ‘Triangle Building’

The so-called “Triangle Building” won’t soon be forgotten by Seabrook residents after it is demolished next week to make way for a road project. The building has sat at the corner of Texas 146 and NASA Road 1 for more more than 80 years. >>>PHOTOS: Coolest landmarks in Houston suburbs... less The so-called “Triangle Building” won’t soon be forgotten by Seabrook residents after it is demolished next week to make way for a road project. The building has sat at the corner of Texas 146 and NASA ... more Photo: Yvette Orozco / Yvette Orozco Photo: Yvette Orozco / Yvette Orozco Image 1 of / 27 Caption Close Seabrook residents mourn impending doom of unique ‘Triangle Building’ 1 / 27 Back to Gallery

The small, oddly shaped building is painted peach with a pink tint — depending on the light — and marooned on its own patch of land surrounded by crisscrossing roads at the center of a busy Seabrook intersection.

“They’re going to knock it down huh? Well, I guess you can’t stop progress … it’s part of life,” Seabrook native Donald Botkin said in an interview earlier this year about what is commonly known as “The Triangle Building,” a tiny flat-iron-shaped structure that has stood for more than 86 years at the corner of NASA Parkway and Texas 146.

In February 2018, the Texas Department of Transportation officially took ownership of the building from its most recent occupant, attorney Michael Valentine, through eminent domain. The agency says demolition is scheduled to take place Sept. 12, 13 and 16, with the destruction occurring from 9 p.m. until 5 a.m. each day.

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The building is part of the sweep of demolitions to make room for a construction project that will expand a stretch of road on Texas 146 from Red Bluff Road to Kirby Drive from four lanes to as many as 12 in some sports to ease traffic congestion and accommodate development in the area.

In the last two years, at least nine businesses nearby, where NASA Parkway turns into Bayport Boulevard as it crosses Texas 146, have already been brought down or relocated because of the construction project, which has been carried out incrementally since February.

“We come to work and notice another business gone, and so we never know what’s next,” said Terry Butcher, who with her husband, Joe, operates El Lago Coffee and Antiques down the road from the tiny building.

‘I wish they would save the building’

Butcher, 62, has watched as the building’s facade has been gradually dismantled and picked apart one ornate and quirky piece at a time over the last several months.

“They had these old brass bells inlayed along the outside, Mexican Talavera pottery plates … if you go around the building, all that is gone,” she said. “I wish they would save (the building) and put it somewhere else, relocated it, but I don’t know if it would even be possible, and it would probably be costly.”

The structure is now essentially just brick and mortar with hollowed-out windows, mostly stripped of the pieces that made it such as an eye-catcher along Texas 146.

“All the cool stuff is gone,” said Joe Butcher, 57.

The Triangle Building didn’t start out as an actual triangle. In the 1930s, the original property was left over from a previous lot, like the corner of a piece of paper, said Valentine.

“The owner back in 1931 built a little building to sell beer and bait, and it was that for many years,” he said.

The building’s shape was then closer to a rhombus, according to Valentine.

In the 1980s, Alan Thayer, a Seabrook builder and artist, bought the structure and created its central Mexican theme: Aztec lizards, a sheet metal mariachi band, the antique plates etc. Fast-forward to 2003, when Thayer and Valentine, who had come onboard in 1989 and needed more space to grow his law practice, added a second story, more than doubling the square footage and turning its shape into a triangle.

Valentine practiced law successfully out of the building for 20 years. He has been resigned to the building’s demise for some time. While he might have been able to push back on urban redevelopment or a condominium, he said the expansion of a busy highway felt inevitable. Valentine also feels that TxDOT wasn’t interested in preservation.

“If they would have moved the road five feet to the other side, I could still be there .. because what they’re going to replace the building with is a concrete island,” he said.

Down the street at Midnight Pizza, manager Hunter Crowell, 18, has a clear view of the building from the restaurant patio.

“It was just one of those things that gave a lot of people a visual memory of Seabrook,” he said. “It’s always been a really cool place to look at.”

Midnight Pizza, housed in the city’s original post office, has its own claim to Seabrook history, and Crowell is nostalgic about other landmarks like the triangle building that are disappearing.

‘Just more cars and traffic’

“Its sad to see a building like that with so much history because of all the development … it sucks to see it go because of that,” he said. “When it’s gone, all I’ll see is just cars and more traffic.”

Before it was informally referred to by some residents as The Triangle Building, the 660-square-foot structure has been through several incarnations throughout the decades before it was a law office — a bait-and-tackle shop, a stop for local fishermen and a bar.

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Botkin, 78, grew up in ‘Old Seabrook’ — a term used by many longtime residents as a nod to the part of town that, to those like Botkin, still feels small and from another time.

“I guess the building represents a piece of my late childhood,” he said earlier this year. “Seabrook was small back then. Everyone knew everyone. It makes me happy to think about the time I spent working there, and I enjoyed meeting people from other parts that would come in.

“It was called Seabrook Ice House before Curley’s Corner,” he recalled. “I started working for Mr. Cook when I was 16 years old and worked there from 1956-1957.”

Botkin recalled riding his bike to work or being dropped off by his dad.

“We sold ice, beer, canned food, snacks,” he said. “Back then, you might have two or three different things you did for a living.”

The city was incorporated in 1964, leading to the construction of the bridge that connected it to Kemah and not long after, of Texas 146.

It was good for the city’s growth and development, but over the years some things got lost in the transition.

The Triangle Building is one of the last original remnants of that part of the city’s history, said Joe Butcher.

“I don’t like it, I don’t think anybody does,” he said. “Half of Old Seabrook is getting wiped out, but you have do something about the traffic, I guess,” he said.

The Butchers operate their own shop out of a 120-year-old wooden house, which, according to legend, was transported from either Galveston or the Heights neighborhood in Houston.

“We’re going to stay as long as we can, as long as we can pay the bills,” said Terry Butcher.

Both longtime residents of Seabrook, the couple see the demolition of the odd building as an inevitable casualty of progress.

Reflections on a changing town

Joe Butcher never stepped inside the building, but still, he said, it can’t be replaced.

“My main connection to the building is just it being there forever,” he said.

Shops like the Butchers’ and Midnight Pizza are still thriving, but watching the Triangle Building and other parts of the area get gutted by construction crews is a reminder that things rarely stay the same.

“A lot of Old Seabrook is going to be lost once (the demolition) happens,” said Terry Butcher. “You’re going to have so many people from these big highways.

“Right now it’s still calm and there isn’t a lot of crime, but I think once the road is expanded, who knows — I think it’s going to change a lot.”

To Valentine, the demolition is “sad, depressing and frustrating.”

“You get money, but it doesn’t make up for the emotional (attachment),” he said.

Now that the building has an official end date, Valentine, who plans to be out of Seabrook during the demolition schedule, isn’t planning to be there for the spectacle.

“Six months from now, Google Maps will take me (and the building) off the map, and it will be like we never existed,” he said. “That’s the thing that’s really depressing — it will be just wiped away.”

While Botkin said his personal connection to the building grounds him in his Seabrook roots, he doesn’t want to to live in the past.

“I’ve seen many changes in Seabrook,” he said. “I know a lot of folks don’t want to see the landmark go away. I understand their feelings. Before we had shopping centers, we had family owned stores in Old Seabrook. Hell, I guess if you really think about it … before Seabrook became Seabrook, Native Americans lived on the shoreline near what is now Pine Gully Park. Case in point, things change, but don’t they have to?”