Elbow Room

Elbow Room

3010 Gaston Avenue

This simple, elegant, workhorse of a brick building was constructed about 1933 and first housed Royal Cleaners. It was gone within a year, followed by the California Flower Shop. Businesses came and left the small 1,824 square foot building every few years, and at times stood vacant. Berta’s Café opened there about 1940, and it proved to be a stable neighborhood institution, occupying the space until about 1957. After the café closed, other short-lived restaurants followed, including Mozelle’s and Grill Thirty-Ten. Around 1964, the little brick building became home to the Thirty-Ten Lounge, drawing its name from both the address and the café. It was followed in 1968 by Cabaret Lounge and in 1998 by the Elbow Room.

The Elbow Room is one of the last remaining historic commercial buildings on that block of Gaston and is threatened with being purchased or acquired by eminent domain by the Texas A&M University System. They would like to demolish the building to build a new clinical education building on the lot for its dental school.
UPDATE: The building was demolished in the fall of 2017 for the construction of the new dental school building for Texas A&M.