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Masonic Building

Kerrville, Kerr County, Texas

Marker Inscription

This locally quarried limestone building is a good example of late Italianate-style architecture. The façade features rough and smooth-dressed stone, arched windows and doorways, stone quoins and a projecting pressed metal cornice. Charles Schreiner formed the Kerrville Masonic Company in 1890, and Kerrville Lodge No. 697 A.F. & A.M. met here on the second story until 1927, when they moved to Schreiner's former house and rented this space to the Odd Fellows. The ground floor has housed the local post office, C.C. Butt Grocery and Texas Power and Light. The property remained in the Schreiner family until 1959.Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-2008

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built of locally quarried limestone, this late Italianate building went up after Charles Schreiner formed the Kerrville Masonic Company in 1890, its façade dressed with arched openings, stone quoins, and a pressed-metal cornice. Kerrville Lodge No. 697 met on the second floor until 1927, when it moved out and leased the space to the Odd Fellows. The ground floor served the town in turn as post office, C.C. Butt Grocery, and Texas Power and Light, and the property stayed in the Schreiner family until 1959.

Why it matters

The building illustrates how fraternal orders and pioneer merchants like Charles Schreiner anchored the commercial and civic life of Texas Hill Country towns.

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Related people

  • · Charles Schreiner

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Kerrville Telephone Company

Kerrville, TX

In 1896, A. C. Schriner and D. H. Comparette sealed a deal with a handshake and $1,000 to start Kerrville's telephone exchange, first linking two wool warehouses before other businesses clamored to join. Within two years lines stretched to Rocksprings, Harper, Junction, and Medina, with remote ranches serving as toll stations well into the 1950s. Incorporated in 1907, the family-run company operated for more than a century.

Guthrie Building

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Finished in 1887 for the sum of $2,600, this thick-walled limestone building is among the oldest surviving structures in Kerr County. It was built by Robert Guthrie, a Scottish-born publisher who carried on a family newspaper tradition, housing his Kerrville Eye and a hotel upstairs. Over the following decades it passed through a succession of editors and civic leaders—Ed Smallwood, Jesse Grinstead—and later served as Kerrville's City Hall and a photographic studio, its Italianate stonework surviving into a careful restoration.

Beitel Lumberyard

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When the San Antonio & Aransas Pass Railroad made Kerrville its last stop, San Antonio lumberman Frank J. Beitel bought land here in 1889 to open a lumberyard, betting on the county's timber and coming growth. The business thrived, expanding into a warehouse, retail building, and lumber shed, and gained its own rail spur for loading goods after the town's depot was rebuilt in the 1910s. For more than a century the yard supplied the materials that built Kerrville.

Scott and Josephine Carr Schreiner

Kerrville, TX

Whitfield Scott Schreiner and his wife Josephine built their lives on Kerrville's Water Street in a home designed by noted San Antonio architect Atlee B. Ayres. Scott led the family's Chas. Schreiner Co., the chamber of commerce, and the local telephone company, and the municipal golf course still carries his name. Josephine, trained in music at the Cincinnati Conservatory, founded the Kerrville Garden Club and was active in civic and women's organizations across the region.