Aston-Landers Building

🏛️The era

In 1893, when Andy Aston and George Landers put up this building, Granbury was a lively county seat in North Central Texas. Hood County was named for Confederate general John Bell Hood. Granbury was its hub, a place where farmers and ranchers came into town to trade, do business and, for many, stop at a saloon.

In small towns across the West, the saloon was a social institution. Men talked business and politics there and passed the time. To a growing number of Americans, though, saloons stood for drunkenness, violence, ruined families and wages spent before they reached home. In the late nineteenth century that concern turned into one of the most powerful reform movements in American history.

Texas let local communities vote on whether to allow liquor sales, a system known as local option. Across the state, towns and counties argued, campaigned and voted, and the map of "wet" and "dry" places kept changing. Granbury's own swing from saloon town to dry town is part of that wider fight.

👥People & events

Aston and Landers built their saloon of native stone with a patented iron front. Mass-produced iron storefronts were popular in the era because they let a building have large windows and a fashionable look. Behind them was solid local stone.

The building saw real drama. In 1901 a duel broke out here, and the person most badly hurt was a horseman on the square who had nothing to do with the fight. It is a sharp reminder of how dangerous saloon violence could be for everyone nearby, not just the men involved.

In 1905 Carrie Nation came to Granbury. She was one of the most famous temperance crusaders in the country, known for attacking saloons and smashing their fixtures, often with a hatchet. The next year, 1906, Granbury voters outlawed liquor. That vote ended this building's life as a saloon.

Aston adapted to the change. He turned the building into a buggy and harness shop and hired skilled leather craftsmen Charlie Maxwell and Wilkes McCuen. In a time of horse-drawn travel, their saddles, harnesses and tack were essential goods. Over the years the building went on to house shops of many kinds.

🇺🇸Its place in the American story

The Aston-Landers Building traces in one storefront a change that swept across the United States. The temperance movement, driven by women's groups, churches and reformers, turned town after town dry through local votes. In 1920 it achieved national Prohibition. Granbury's 1906 vote was one of many local steps on that road.

Carrie Nation became a national symbol of that crusade. Women of her era could not vote in most elections, and temperance gave many of them a way into public life and political action. Some historians see the movement as an important training ground for the campaign for women's suffrage.

The building's second career tells a quieter but equally real story. Harness making and buggy work were skilled trades that kept horse-drawn America running. Within a few decades, automobiles would make them nearly obsolete, so this building also records a way of life that was about to disappear.

🧭If you visit

Look closely at the building's front. The patented iron storefront and native stone are details the builders chose on purpose, and they make it one of the more interesting buildings to study on the square. Picture the swinging saloon trade of the 1890s, and then the smell of leather and the sound of a craftsman's tools after 1906.

Granbury's historic courthouse square is well known for its preserved nineteenth-century buildings. It is a pleasant place to walk, with old storefronts all around. Use this marker as a starting point and see how many other buildings from the same era you can spot.

Granbury is an easy drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth area and makes a good day trip or weekend stop. Walk the square, stand where the 1901 duel shook the town, and remember that a vote held here more than a century ago was part of a national debate that would eventually change the Constitution.