Old Broom Factory Building
Round Rock, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Erected in 1876. Victorian-style building has ashlar-cut limestone front with stepped parapet and keystone arches. During prosperous railroad era, housed Round Rock Broom Company (1887?-1912), an important local business. (Broom made here won a gold medal at St. Louis World's Fair, 1904.) Building also housed general store, furniture store, school, skating rink, and car repair shop. Roger Burleson, owner, preserved structure, 1969. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1970
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Erected in 1876, this Victorian limestone building with its stepped parapet and keystone arches thrived in Round Rock's booming railroad era. From about 1887 to 1912 it housed the Round Rock Broom Company, whose brooms won a gold medal at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair. Over the years the versatile structure also served as a general store, furniture store, school, skating rink, and car repair shop before being preserved in 1969.
Why it matters
The old broom factory is a reminder of the small-town manufacturing that flourished along the railroads, turning local businesses into competitors on a world's-fair stage.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When this limestone building went up in 1876, Central Texas was changing fast. The Civil War and its hard aftermath were only a decade past, and the region's farm towns were betting their futures on one thing: the railroad. In Round Rock, as in so many Texas communities, the coming of the tracks meant new streets, new storefronts, and a sudden sense that a small place could reach much bigger markets.
The years that followed are what the marker calls the prosperous railroad era. Rail lines let local producers ship goods far beyond the reach of a wagon, and they brought in manufactured goods, settlers, and ideas in return. A town with a depot could support businesses that made things, not just sold them.
This was also the age of the Victorian commercial building. Merchants wanted fronts that looked solid and respectable, and in Central Texas that often meant the local limestone. Cut into neat, squared blocks, finished with arched openings and a stepped roofline, a building like this one announced that its owners expected to be around for a long time.
People & events
For roughly a quarter century, from around 1887 (the marker itself puts a question mark on that date) until 1912, this building was home to the Round Rock Broom Company. It is easy to forget how essential a broom once was. Before vacuum cleaners, every home, shop, barn, and schoolhouse depended on one, and brooms were typically made from broomcorn, a tall grass-like crop whose stiff, fibrous heads could be bound into bristles.
What makes this company's story remarkable is how far its work traveled. A broom made in this building won a gold medal at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904, one of the grandest international expositions of its day. Think about that: a small-town Texas workshop, competing on the same stage as manufacturers from across the nation and the world, and coming home with top honors.
The building's life didn't end when the broom company closed. Over the decades it was a general store, a furniture store, a school, a skating rink, and a car repair shop. Each use tells you something about what the town needed at the time. Finally, in 1969, owner Roger Burleson took steps to preserve the structure, and the next year it was recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark.
Its place in the American story
The Round Rock Broom Company is a small-scale version of a very big American story. In the late 1800s, railroads knit the country into a single national market. That network didn't just help giant corporations. It let small manufacturers in modest towns ship their products widely and measure themselves against the best in the land.
World's fairs were where that competition became visible. The 1904 exposition in St. Louis was meant to show off American progress, and a medal there was a genuine mark of distinction. That a Texas broom took gold says a lot about how much quality and skill could be found in places far from the big industrial cities.
The building's long string of later uses shows something else about the American small town: it adapts. A single sturdy structure could go from factory to schoolroom to roller rink to garage, carrying the community's changing needs through the automobile age and beyond. Buildings like this one are why so many Main Streets still feel rooted in their past.
If you visit
Take a moment to look closely at the front before anything else. The marker points out its best features: the ashlar-cut limestone, meaning stone dressed into smooth, regular blocks; the stepped parapet along the roofline; and the keystone arches over the openings, each topped by a wedge-shaped center stone that locks the arch in place. It's a fine example of what local builders could do with Central Texas stone.
As you stand there, try picturing the building in each of its lives: workers binding brooms, then shoppers browsing goods, then children at lessons, then skaters circling the floor, then mechanics bent over engines. Few buildings anywhere have played so many roles.
Round Rock sits just north of Austin, so this stop fits easily into a Central Texas day trip or a drive along the I-35 corridor. It pairs well with a stroll through the town's older streets, where other historic buildings help you imagine what the railroad boom looked like on the ground.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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