Free Press Houston Advertisers & Business History

An ad is published here only after it has been seen on the held PDF page. Lists of galleries or shows, the staff box and the paper's own website lines are not counted as ads. Pages not yet reviewed are not counted as having no ads.

The archive holds issues from May 2005 to October 2015, with gaps. Some are pre-press proofs or exports, not copies of the printed paper, and an ad in a proof may differ from what went to press. Issues from 2003–2005 and 2015–2018 are not held, so the record says nothing about who advertised then.

A business named in an ad is described as promoted by it. That is not proof of who paid. Bands named in a show ad are performers, not advertisers. The first and last ads held are not opening or closing dates. A shared street address does not make two businesses the same. Addresses, phone numbers and web addresses are transcribed as printed and are historical. Closures and current status are given only with a dated source, and are otherwise marked not verified.

The rows are available as a dataset (CSV and JSON).

Related collection: the Houston Local Band Registry, 2003–2018, documenting the local acts these venues, stores and promoters helped sustain.