In 1949 the new Woolworth's at Main and McKinney in downtown Houston fed its shoppers at a ground-floor food counter, and a separate counter served frozen malts.
The corner lost those counters in 1999, when the store came down.
By 2001 a parking garage stood on the lot, with a food court in its basement and a door from the street straight down into the East McKinney Tunnel, the walkway of tunnels and skywalks along McKinney Street.
Lunch carried on below the sidewalk. By 2011 one counter sold foot-long Vietnamese-style sandwiches with grilled pork, by 2012 another served dumplings and pho, and in 2016 a Thai kitchen opened down there.
In November 2025 five basement suites under the garage went on the market, on a corner that had already found its lunch a new home once.
Woolworth's opens at Main and McKinney
In November 1949, the mayor cut the ribbon on a new Woolworth's at 930 Main, on the corner of Main and McKinney in downtown Houston.
Fluorescent lights shone over terrazzo as escalators carried shoppers between levels.
The white-stone building rose three floors over a basement, with air conditioning throughout.
Its merchandise counters, added together, ran more than a mile, and the whole development had cost $8 million.
Lunch came with the shopping.
A food counter on the ground floor fed people who wanted a meal without leaving the store, and a separate counter sold frozen malts.
A former Texas governor came for the opening, and so did a man sent by the St. Louis Cardinals baseball club.
The lot had a longer past.
First Presbyterian Church built a stone church on that corner in the 1890s and held services there until a fire in 1932, after which the congregation met in other buildings.
Woolworth's then bought the old church site, and the contractor Linbeck put up the store on it.
Houston Center links its towers to the Park Shops
The first underground links downtown went back to the 1930s: short passages between separate buildings and theaters.
New office towers extended the network through the 1960s and 1970s.
On the east side of downtown, along McKinney Street, the Houston Center campus added a new piece of it, partly underground and partly in the air.
The campus went up in stages.
Two Houston Center opened at 909 Fannin in 1974, One Houston Center at 1221 McKinney in 1978, and Three Houston Center at 1301 McKinney in 1982, with Four Houston Center following at 1221 Lamar in 1983.
Tunnels and skywalks over the streets connected the campus, so its office workers could reach shops and food without stepping outdoors.
Those shops opened in 1982 at 1200 McKinney.
The Park Shops spread across several shopping levels, filled with small specialty stores and places to eat, and had no department store to anchor them.
Joined along McKinney, the lobbies, passages, and bridges formed the eastern end of the route that took the name East McKinney Tunnel: the McKinney Street stretch of the tunnel and skywalk network in downtown Houston, Texas.
The route crossed properties that were built and owned separately.
A walker could come in through an office lobby, go down to the tunnel level, pass along corridors lined with shops, and climb to the Houston Center bridges.
The bank building renovates its tunnel corridor
On the next block of McKinney, between Main and Fannin, stood the City National Bank Building at 1001 McKinney, built in 1946 and 1947.
Its banking hall rose to unusually tall ceilings, and Corrigan's Jewelry rented part of its street-level frontage.
The office floors above stepped back as they rose, finished in granite, tan brick, and maroon terra cotta.
Work to rehabilitate the building ran from 1999 to 2003.
More than $500,000 went to cleaning and preserving the brick and terra cotta outside.
In April 2000, with the work under way, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Its exterior restoration also had to pass review by the city's historical commission.
The building's own 777-space garage was finished in 1999, and new restrooms went in on the tunnel level in 2002.
Down at that level, a basement retail corridor ran over polished-concrete floors beneath suspended ceiling panels and fluorescent fixtures, with room for a printer, a jeweler, a women's fitness center, and three places to eat.
A garage replaces Woolworth's
Woolworth's held 930 Main for about five decades.
In 1999 the store was torn down, and the white-stone facade, the escalators, and the food counters went with it.
Construction of a parking garage on the lot began in 2000.
The plan, announced in January 2001, called for an underground food court of about seven eateries and depended on links to the tunnels and the office buildings nearby.
Parking was promised for March 2001, the first restaurants and stores for April.
McKinney Place Garage held its grand opening in April 2001, a month behind the parking date.
It stacked 12 parking levels over two retail floors, with the food court in the basement, and it held 1,214 spaces, against 777 in the bank building's garage across Main.
Its entrance on the street led straight down into the tunnels, which made it one of only two downtown buildings where the public could walk in from the sidewalk.
Almost everywhere else, the way down ran through an office lobby.
Jason's Deli signed for what would be its first downtown Houston shop.
Krispy Kreme's operator took a ten-year lease on a corner shop planned with doors on both Main and McKinney, tables and counter seats, and a doughnut machine where people walking past could watch it work.
A Mailboxes Etc. and a Payless Shoes signed on as well.
In July 2002 the garage's owners went before City Council in support of Main Street Square, which would close part of Main to cars, while a property owner with several buildings on Main spoke against it.
The city went ahead.
In 2003 the passage between the garage and 1001 McKinney was renovated, and in 2004 the square opened and trains on the new Main Street rail line began running beside the garage.
Small lunch counters fill the food court
In October 2008 Houston Pavilions opened several blocks away, a 350,000-square-foot complex of stores and entertainment facing the street.
That December the entire downtown tunnel network held 378,500 square feet of shops.
Under the garage, the food court's counters opened straight onto low-ceilinged corridors, and by October 2011 one of them belonged to Top Taste Asian Subs and Grill.
Its Vietnamese-style sandwiches came on long rolls filled with grilled pork, cucumber, carrots, and herbs, with Swiss cheese if a customer asked and a full foot-long size on offer.
Iced coffee was on the menu too.
By January 2012 Star Chef Dumpling House was cooking in the same food court, selling pan-fried pork dumplings, deep-fried chicken ones, and pho.
Time for Thai opened down there in late July 2016.
The stalls serving lunch in the basement were small businesses, each under its own name.
Along the rest of the route, other storefronts handled printing, dry cleaning, jewelry, and haircuts for the people working upstairs.
Renovations at 1001 McKinney and Houston Center
Brookfield bought the Houston Center campus in 2017 and began rebuilding it in 2019.
At the west end of the route, Amstar and TRC Capital Partners bought 1001 McKinney in 2018 and hired Gensler to redo it.
That $4.3 million renovation, finished in April 2020, joined the ground-floor lobbies, put new finishes in the tunnel and at the skybridge entrance on the fifth floor, and gave tenants a lounge, a fitness center, and meeting rooms.
A mural about 10 feet tall and nearly 100 feet long went across the lobby ceiling, in a room styled after the building's original Art Deco and Art Moderne details.
That November, months into the pandemic, the tunnel system was still running on its normal weekday schedule, from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.
At the east end, the old Park Shops took on a new name.
In November 2021 the owner announced that the retail building would become The Highlight at Houston Center, and Puttshack was announced for its indoor miniature golf, with an opening promised for late 2022.
Work on the four retail levels, estimated at $26.5 million, brought a remodeled food hall, a larger glass entrance on the street, and new storefronts.
Brookfield also added a central plaza on McKinney and renovated the skybridges between buildings, and in early April 2023 it announced the campus work complete.
Puttshack opened on April 26, 2023.
Five suites for lease under the garage
Downtown had about 148,000 office workers in 2024, and their attendance at the office stood at about two-thirds.
In December 2008, 87 percent of the tunnel network's retail space had been occupied.
In the first quarter of 2024, the figure was 73 percent.
Under 930 Main, the garage basement went on the market in November 2025.
Five suites there, about 11,000 square feet in all, are now for lease, most of them still fitted out the way earlier tenants left them.
The unfinished one is an open shell with sprinklers and LED lights, while another is a small office with a kitchenette.
A former bank or finance office keeps its private rooms and kitchenette, and the old salon or spa still has a glass storefront and two entrances.
Lunch kept going along the route. In 2025 the East McKinney stretch had Shipley Do-Nuts, Mayuri Express, and Taka Sushi & Ramen.
Mayuri offered Indian snacks, biryani, dosas, sweets, and lassi, with its main dishes under $10, and Taka served sushi and several kinds of ramen.
The route is open, and so are its renovated ends.
It keeps office hours: the public can generally use the tunnels until 6 p.m. on weekdays, and the shops stay shut on evenings and weekends.
At the west end, 1001 McKinney keeps its tan brick, terra cotta, and renovated lobby, along with its way into the tunnel.
At the east end, The Highlight is open with restaurants, shops, wellness businesses, and entertainment, reached by tunnel and skywalk.
The garage at 930 Main was planned around a basement food court of about seven eateries for the people in the offices nearby.
One of the suites now on offer down there is a food-court counter, its two serving windows and its hood still in place.
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