Convenience Big Store: Chronicle archives: '2 hypnotists given fines, jail terms'

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Can the Garden Oaks Theater be saved?

The clock is ticking for the Garden Oaks Theater.

As reporter Ashley Soebroto wrote over the weekend, a nonprofit has reached a deal with an investor that owns the building to buy it for $7.1 million — but backers only have 90 days to find the money.

Arthouse Houston Director Maureen McNamara said it was able to strike a deal with the investment fund to buy the building for the amount the fund paid for it. Now, Arthouse Houston has 90 days — an initial 30 days and an extension of up to 60 — to raise that money, McNamara said, or the building will be demolished. The extension would cost the organization $100,000, Soebroto writes.

So how can you help? The organization is asking the community for donations to help buy back the theater.

"We need big supporters and we need small supporters," McNamara said. "We need everybody we can get to make it happen."

Jhair Romero got an early start to Women's History Month last week with this writeup of Obedience Smith, one of Houston's earliest pioneers. Much of the city's core once belonged to her, you know.

J.R. Gonzales, Senior Digital Production Editor

john.gonzales@houstonchronicle.com

One from the archives

Mail and fuel go into a big 21-passenger Douglas in preparation for a night flight from Houston to New York. The administration building (Houston Municipal Airport) is in the background. Published Oct. 26, 1941 Eddie Schisser Chronicle file

Photo by: Houston Chronicle

Mail and fuel go into a 21-passenger Douglas in preparation for a night flight from Houston Municipal Airport to New York in this 1941 photo.

In recent years, the airport building was home to the 1940 Air Terminal Museum. Earlier this week, the longtime museum, a tribute to Houston's aviation history, closed because it was no longer economically sustainable, a museum official said.

What happens next to the museum and its artifacts remains to be seen. Stay tuned.

A page from the past

Photo by: Houston Chronicle File

Leon Hale in 1981: Stuck in the rain with a flat on I-10

This column originally appeared in the Houston Post on March 3, 1981. In it, Hale is stuck on the side of I-10 with a flat tire.

This week in history

Houston Chronicle headline, March 3, 1961.

Photo by: Houston Chronicle File

Two defendants pleaded guilty on this day in 1961 and were sentenced to a few days in jail for practicing hypnotism.

Specifically, it was a charge of illegally practicing medicine that landed the two in hot water. They were among five arrested in June 1960 in a crackdown on hypnotism.

One of the men who pleaded guilty, a 24-year-old, said he was no longer a hypnotist and was working as a radio station announcer.

The case stemmed from a year-long investigation by the Better Business Bureau and the State Board of Medical Examiners into claims the hypnotists were charging fees for treating illnesses.

30 years ago

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Parade in downtown, Feb. 10, 1996.

Photo by: E. Joseph Deering, Houston Chronicle

This was Houston in February 1996

Hakeem, Bo and the gold dome: See the city as it was 30 years ago through Chronicle archive photos.

Before we go

Last month, I posted this 1955 aerial photo from the Houston Post files. Problem is, I had no idea where it was taken.

One reader suggested it might have been the South Post Oak area, near Meyerland. Not quite, but after doing some more investigating, I found that the photographed was taken from the south side of Houston.

More specifically, we are looking toward the north from where Telephone Road meets Reveille. In the foreground is Sims Bayou.

There are few more items of interest I want to point out in this photo. More on that in the March 17 send of this newsletter, which goes out to Chronicle subscribers.