HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Bush-Morgan Cherry Building

Granbury, Hood County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Constructed in 1891, this building has been associated throughout its history with prominent Granbury citizens and successful businesses. From 1891 until 1894, it served as the dry goods store of F.C. Bush, who was the city tax collector and secretary in 1892. In 1895 the building housed the Morgan Drug Store, run by Eugene H. Morgan, who later became a prominent local physician. For the next 72 years, the building was associated with other drugstores, including that of William H. Cherry, who served as mayor of Granbury and as a director of The First National Bank.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built in 1891, this Granbury commercial building housed a succession of the town's leading merchants and civic figures. It opened as F. C. Bush's dry goods store — Bush served as city tax collector and secretary — then became the Morgan Drug Store under Eugene H. Morgan, who later practiced as a physician. For seventy-two years it remained tied to drugstores, including that of William H. Cherry, a Granbury mayor and bank director.

Why it matters

The building's long run of merchants, druggists, mayors, and bankers shows how a single Main Street storefront could anchor the commercial and civic life of a small Texas town for generations.

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Related people

  • · F. C. Bush
  • · Eugene H. Morgan
  • · William H. Cherry

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

E. A. Hannaford Building

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Born in England, raised in Ohio, and a Union Army veteran, E. A. "Doc" Hannaford came to Granbury in 1871 and opened his drugstore in a tent before prospering. In 1886 he and merchant J. D. Baker put up a two-part Italianate commercial building — among the first stone structures in town — known as the "Arch Block," its cornice advertising Hannaford's Drug and Book Store. He became a leading civic figure, and the upper floor housed the local newspaper, doctors' offices, and a beauty parlor.

Baker-Doyle Building

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Merchant and community leader John D. Baker built this native limestone building in 1882 for his dry goods store on the Granbury square. His partner James H. Doyle became sole owner in 1899, and over the years the building housed a national bank, grocers, dentists, and doctors. Its High Victorian Italianate style shows in the arched, fanlighted windows and simple stone cornice.

First National Bank

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The first section of this hand-hewn native limestone building went up in 1883, the same year D.C. Cogdell and John H. Traylor opened a private bank in the young town of Granbury. The institution earned a national bank charter in 1887 and later expanded into an adjoining unit, its Victorian storefront reflecting the confidence of a growing Hood County seat. A roster of long-serving officers, some staying decades, steered the bank across the late 19th and 20th centuries.

Hardware and Tin Shop

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As Granbury's courthouse square filled in during the 1870s and 1880s, wood gave way to stone quarried nearby. Built in 1882 and rebuilt after an 1891 fire, this building passed from investor to saloonkeepers to, by 1895, a hardware and tin shop run by a former county clerk. Upstairs worked Lon Morris, a lawyer remembered as a benefactor of the college that bears his name.