Brick Store House
Columbus, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Owned and occupied 1840-67 by Thomas W. Harris, a physician from Virginia. Bought by William and Mary Pinchback (1867), Kasper Vogel (1875), Bertha Wagner (1878), and still owned by Wagner heirs. Since 1912 store has housed Feherenkamp Grocery.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This sturdy brick building in Columbus was owned and occupied from 1840 to 1867 by Thomas W. Harris, a Virginia-born physician, in the early years of the Republic and young state of Texas. It passed through a succession of owners — the Pinchbacks, Kasper Vogel, and Bertha Wagner, whose heirs still held it — and since 1912 has sheltered the Fehrenkamp Grocery, a rare case of a frontier-era commercial building serving its town for well over a century.
Why it matters
Surviving early masonry stores document the commercial backbone of Texas river towns, where a single durable building could anchor a community's trade across generations.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Thomas W. Harris
- · Kasper Vogel
- · Bertha Wagner
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Columbus State Bank
Columbus, TX
When this bank put up its building in 1919, it deliberately preserved a wall of the 1857 Boedecker Building, a structure that had already sheltered many enterprises including the city's first bank in 1875. A 1969 rebuilding again wove pieces of the older structures into the new. The result is a bank whose very walls carry more than a century of Columbus commerce.
Brunson Building
Columbus, TX
Charles Brunson left Westphalia, Germany, in 1845 as part of the great mid-century German migration to Texas, and by about 1867 had settled in Columbus, where his saloon prospered. In 1891 he erected this Victorian commercial building, adding an adjoining store in 1896; it poured drinks until around 1919 and then took on other uses. Aside from a lowered canopy and altered windows, it still wears its original Victorian dress.
Ehrenwerth-Ramsey-Untermeyer Building
Columbus, TX
Henry M. Ehrenwerth raised this two-story commercial building in 1873-75 using bricks fired at a local kiln, opening it as a mercantile store. In the 1880s it rang with the noise of L.G. Smith's Red Elk Saloon and Gambling Hall, then settled into respectability when James Ramsey bought it in 1896 for a hardware, implement, and undertaking business. In 1925 it passed to the Untermeyer hardware firm.
Rosenfield Building
Columbus, TX
Columbus was one of the oldest Anglo settlements in Texas, and this corner held one of its earliest downtown commercial structures, raised in 1837 and later home to a doctor's family and practice. In 1872 merchant John Rosenfield acquired the property, and around 1896 he built the handsome brick storefront that stands today. With its buff-brick walls, terra cotta trim, and paired-bay upper facade, it is a textbook example of a turn-of-the-century small-town Main Street.