When Almeda Mall opened in southeast Houston in 1968, a garden sat at its center: a sunken brick court with tropical trees and a pineapple-topped fountain, all under a domed skylight.
At Christmas in 1974 and 1975, poinsettias were built up into a tree around that fountain. In 1976 Santa's Express train ran through the holiday display, and by then Farrell's had opened its ice cream parlor at the end of a hall.
Macy's, at the north end, closed in 2025 for good. Once before, in 2008, Hurricane Ike had soaked the same store and emptied it. That time it opened again a year later.
The previous fall, the 23 acres under it had been sold to a company that does not own the mall, so the building the mall was built onto now sits on someone else's ground.
Foley's picks a field by the Gulf Freeway
On November 23, 1965, a ceremony started construction of a Foley's store at the Almeda-Genoa interchange on the Gulf Freeway, with Houston's mayor and the Harris County judge among the officials taking part.
The site was an open field.
In 1964 its neighbors were the Gulfway Drive-In and a stretch of sand pits, and the first streets of Sagemont had been laid out nearby.
In 1962, while choosing ground for its fourth store, the Houston department store had weighed two other sites: land on Airport Boulevard, which cost too much, and a tract on FM 528 in the Clear Lake area, dropped after the information its planners had asked for about Del Webb's development there was never supplied.
On October 3, 1966, the date it had been planned for, Foley's opened the store.
Its two floors held 209,000 square feet, and palms brought from elsewhere had been replanted around it.
The plan for the tract called for a 56-acre Almeda-Genoa Shopping City, and for two years the store was the only part of that plan finished.
That November a postal station open 24 hours a day began working inside.
Almeda Mall opens between two department stores
The mall meant to join Foley's still had no settled name in October 1966.
J.C. Penney, which had a say by contract, proposed calling the Rouse Company's two new Houston malls Kingswood and Queenswood.
The idea was dropped within weeks.
The southeast project kept the Almeda name, and its twin, Northwest Mall, would open later in October 1968.
Plans in 1967 called for J.C. Penney and about 80 stores.
Almeda Mall opened with 60 on Thursday, October 10, 1968, at Interstate 45 and Almeda-Genoa Road in southeast Houston, Texas.
Its enclosed corridor ran from J.C. Penney at the south end to Foley's at the north, and a magician and an assistant performed on opening day.
At the center sat a sunken court with a brick floor, tropical trees, and a fountain topped by a pineapple, all under a domed skylight.
The drawings had put that garden behind glass. The glass was never built.
Woolworth's and B. Dalton Booksellers traded there, and so did nine separate shoe stores.
Le Petit sold a hot dog called the French Poodle Supreme.
Piccadilly opened its cafeteria in the food wing with 25 salads and a 49-cent Satellite platter for children, and a play court with climbing equipment stood beside Doktor's Pet Center.
The food wing fills and the fountain goes
By 1976 the food wing had grown up around Piccadilly.
Shipley's Donuts and Baskin-Robbins had arrived, and the old Flaming Pit had been split between El Chico and The Saloon.
Farrell's Ice Cream Parlour opened at the end of a hall in 1975, with the Gold Mine arcade trading across the way by the next year.
The two storefronts left empty on opening day had gone to State Farm and Weight Watchers.
Foley's had grown as well, through an expansion announced at the end of 1973 and finished in March 1975.
The center court took on the seasons. The Easter Bunny was there by 1973.
At Christmas in 1974 and 1975 a tree of poinsettias went up around the fountain, and in 1976 the Twelve Days of Christmas display had a Santa's Express train running through it, with $250 in mall money to be drawn on Christmas Eve.
By 1979 the play court's climbing frames had given way to low animal shapes children could climb on.
In 1978 Baybrook Mall opened farther south, near Bay Area Boulevard and closer to Clear Lake, the area Foley's had studied and set aside in 1962.
The domed skylight was what survived.
Beneath it, the pineapple fountain was still in place in 1987 and, after 21 years, in 1989, when Spanish-language radio station KQQK was in center court.
By Christmas 1990 the fountain was gone and the sunken court had been raised to the surrounding floor. The trees lasted until November 1991.
A Christmas train kept running across the flat center after that, and by 1994 a carousel was turning where the garden had been.
J.C. Penney closes as the shops fill up
By 2004 the middle of the mall had new large tenants.
Old Navy and Ross Dress for Less were both counted among its anchors that year, and by the end of 2005 Steve & Barry's had taken Old Navy's place.
Around the interchange, Walmart and the Almeda Crossing area were pulling large stores west of the mall.
The smaller shops filled. About 91 percent of them were leased at the end of 2004 and nearly 99 percent at the end of 2006.
In May 2006 Glimcher Realty Trust, the owner, announced that Almeda was one of five malls it planned to sell.
Foley's became Macy's that year. And on September 16, 2006, J.C. Penney closed its store at the south end of the corridor.
The sale went through in July 2007.
A group of Houston's WCF Development and Buchanan Street Partners paid about $40 million and planned upgrades for the mall it had just bought.
Macy's on one floor and a $6 million renovation
Hurricane Ike hit in September 2008, and at Almeda the Macy's building took the worst of it.
Water soaked the store, much of its interior had to be stripped out, and it stayed closed for about a year while Macy's rebuilt it.
The store reopened in September 2009 on a single floor. Repairs in the rest of the mall, mostly cosmetic, were done by then.
Burlington brought the south end back that year, opening in about 79,000 square feet of the old J.C. Penney space, and on September 26, 2009, the mall celebrated both stores with clowns, magic shows, prize drawings, and face painting.
In August 2010 the 10th Children's Health Day brought free immunizations, health screenings, and school supplies to the mall.
The upgrades WCF had planned arrived in pieces. The entrances were redone and the outside painted by 2011.
In May 2014 crews started by replacing almost half of the north end's roof.
The $6 million project also brought new tile and a redesigned center court, with work extending to the parking lot, lighting, and landscaping.
That Christmas, local choirs kept singing inside while construction continued.
The last of the arboretum structure came out of the court during the project, and the domed skylight stayed overhead.
A foreclosure, then Burlington and Macy's leave
In June 2020 the mall was foreclosed on and sold at a Harris County auction for $16 million. Inside, one tenant was getting bigger.
Game Guys had taken over a large former store space and rebuilt 24,000 square feet of it, with the work scheduled to wrap up in March 2023.
That same year Burlington moved out of the old J.C. Penney space to a smaller store across Almeda-Genoa Road.
The north end changed hands while Macy's was trading there.
In fall 2024 Read King bought the 23-acre parcel under the store and leased the building back to Macy's.
In January 2025 Macy's named Almeda among 66 stores it would close across the country, and when the doors shut in March 2025, the closing covered 72 employees in sales, marketing, and management.
With Macy's gone, neither end of the mall held a department store, and the land at the north end belonged to someone other than the mall's owner.
The Market at Almeda and the mall beside it
Read King chose to keep the Macy's building standing.
Its plan for The Market at Almeda, laid out in December 2025, puts restaurants and shops along the east and west sides of the old store and two pad sites across Kleckley Drive.
Inside the roughly 290,000-square-foot, two-story shell, about 65,000 square feet on the first floor is meant for a grocery, with about 44,000 square feet upstairs for tenants.
The reworked building is planned with no way through into the mall. In January 2026 construction was expected to start within weeks.
The enclosed mall belongs to 4th Dimension Properties, and its doors are open.
In 2024 the Children's Health Day drew more than 500 families.
DD's Discounts fills one of the large spaces, and farther along the corridor Game Guys, 4040 Arcade, and Otaku Anime Cafe supply the games and hobbies.
Foot Locker and Bath & Body Works are among the national chains, but more than half the shops are independently owned.
The south end, home first to J.C. Penney and then to Burlington, is empty.
The domed skylight is the one part of the original center court left, and the corridor beneath it still runs the full length of the mall.
That corridor was built to carry shoppers from one department store to another.
Today the shoppers who walk it come for the shops in between.
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