Block 21 in 1885 had a trio of houses on this corner of North Short & Bonham Street, and one large home to the north, facing east. The large home was 150-151 North Short. Shortly thereafter, a grocery and feed market occupied the corner, facing Bonham. It was perhaps owned and run by Francis R. [Frank] Fenet. It was addressed 314 Bonham Street, and the next building to the west was 313 Bonham Street.
In 1888 a meat business is in 314 A, a restaurant in 314 B, and a shoemaker in 313. The large home to the north is still at 150-151 North Short. By 1892 the corner building is 313 and 314, still a market and restaurant. The large home behind is labeled 211 North Short Street. There is a smaller dwelling north of that, on the corner of North Short and West Houston, labeled 213 North Short.
In 1897 the grocery occupies what is now 300 & 302 Bonham. This new building stretches north to a dock area, and north of that was a walled but no roof one-story facility. Next door to that was the large home. The home is gone by 1902, apparently burned. The grocery was still in business facing Bonham Street, with a furniture warehouse to it's north where the open-roofed building was earlier.
In 1908 the Sanborn Map shows the grocery still in business. That building had iron columns on the first floor, with wood hoists on the second. The wagon yard to the west has now expanded north of the grocery business, to Houston Street. In 1914 the addresses for the grocery were 46 and 48 Bonham Street, and the back storage building was called 209 North 19th Street. North of that, where the large home once stood, was the wagon yard.
By 1920 the configuration is the same, but the barber shop behind the grocery is #9 North 19th Street. Also, 48 Bonham Street was a small space used as a Drug Store. It was run by George M. Minton. The grocery was called Hiram T. Hicks & Gerald R. Hackel [Mrs. Hackel was Hiram Hick's daughter, Mattie] Grocery & Feed Store. Fenet still owned the structure, however. A brick wall stretched north from the old barber shop space (empty at that time) to West Houston. Hiram Hicks died in 1922.
In 1926 the building which housed the grocery is maybe vacant; the drug store is still there in the south corner. The building next door must have burned, for that lot is empty. Across the street to the south, Rodgers-Wade had a huge fire in 1921 that took or damaged many of the buildings on Block 21's south side, but did not burn the Fenet Building. Note: Laura McBath Fenet died in 1922. Her husband, Frank Fenet, died in 1927. The Fenet's daughter, May, married [Admiral] James Otto Richardson of Pearl Harbor fame. Laura's niece, Isabel Dean, married [General] Walter C. Short, also of Pearl Harbor fame.
By 1936 the grocery building, owned then by Fenet's son, Joseph Porter, was The Lamar Theater, located in the city directory as 202 Bonham Street. Lloyd Hearon had his barber shop where the drug store once was, now called 206 Bonham. Joe Fenet died in 1938, and his widow, Mamie Murphy, managed the property left to her.
The Lamar Theater was still there in 1959, and the back lot was for parking. Sometime about 1965 the theater closed, and Bill Bone used the building for his typewriter exchange and repair business, paying rent to then Admiral J.O. & May Fenet Richardson. Bone later purchased the property.
