Since the early 1960s, people have come to this building on the corner of Starr and Chaparral for the bus … or the BUS—Bar Under the Sun.
The building was built as a Continental Trailways Depot in 1964. Greyhound grew so quickly in the 1920s and ’30s that the Interstate Commerce Commission stepped in to encourage smaller, regional lines. With rider numbers decreasing after WWII, four of these lines combined to become Continental Trailways, and with the growth of Corpus Christi’s oil and gas industries, downtown was a perfect location for Continental to invest in a new, larger station.
Continental Trailways’ Silver Eagle buses made waves with their padded seats, year-round air conditioning, music and restrooms on board. Residents and visitors could go north to San Antonio, Austin or Dallas, and south to McAllen or Brownsville. But when rider numbers slowed down in Corpus Christi, so did Continental Trailways’ business, and ironically, this building became a Greyhound station. Greyhound operated on the site until 2015, when it moved to the new Staples Street station to better accommodate riders switching to city buses.
Its days as a vacant building were short, though, as Bar Under the Sun, known simply as “BUS,” opened in December 2017 with a name paying homage to its roots as a bus station. In the history world, we call this an “adaptive reuse” of space—the bones we see being built here in 1964 still stand, even though the purpose of the building has changed, allowing the building to continue serving the city it was built for.
