Otto Reinke Building
Round Rock, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Erected 1879, three years after Round Rock expansion began at railroad's arrival. Some successive tenants included stores, physician, restaurants. After it was gutted by fire in 1963, architect Martin S. Kermacy and wife, Evelyn, built a modern interior within the Victorian Italianate walls.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the railroad reached Round Rock in 1876, it set off a wave of building that reshaped the young Texas town, and Otto Reinke's 1879 commercial block was part of that boom. Over the decades its rooms held stores, a physician's office, and restaurants — the shifting cast of a Main Street storefront. After a 1963 fire hollowed it out, architect Martin Kermacy and his wife Evelyn fitted a modern interior inside the surviving Victorian Italianate walls.
Why it matters
It captures how the coming of the railroad remade small-town America, and how one 19th-century commercial building could be adapted to keep serving a community across nearly 150 years.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Otto Reinke
- · Martin S. Kermacy
- · Evelyn Kermacy
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Round Rock
Round Rock, TX
Settlement gathered here in the late 1830s, and by mid-century former Austin mayor Jacob Harrell was selling lots near the Stagecoach Road crossing at Brushy Creek. A post office opened in 1851, and the community soon renamed itself Round Rock for a distinctive limestone ford; immigration from several states and Sweden doubled its population in the 1850s. When the railroad built a new townsite to the east in 1876, "New Town" quickly eclipsed the old settlement, and Round Rock briefly rivaled Austin as a commercial hub before growing, a century later, into one of the nation's fastest-expanding cities.
The Round Rock
Round Rock, TX
This table-shaped stone in the middle of Brushy Creek long guided Native travelers and early settlers to an important low-water wagon crossing, where century-old wheel ruts can still be seen in the creek bed. The rocky ford drew a settlement whose "Brushy Creek" post office opened in 1851; at postmaster Thomas C. Oatts's urging it was renamed "Round Rock" in 1854 for the very stone. The town kept the name when it moved to meet the railroad a mile east in 1877.
Old Round Rock Stagecoach Inn
Round Rock, TX
In the mid-19th century, central Texas towns like Round Rock grew up around the overland stage lines and the great cattle trails that funneled travelers and drovers northward. A stagecoach inn here would have offered a meal, a bed, and fresh teams to passengers rattling through on the long haul between frontier settlements. Such stops were the highway rest areas of their day, knitting together a young and sparsely settled state.
William M. Owen House Complex
Round Rock, TX
The oldest building in this Round Rock complex is a one-story stone structure raised around 1853 that held the town's first mercantile store and first permanent post office, both run by Thomas C. Oatts, Round Rock's first postmaster. It stood on the pioneer road linking Austin and Georgetown, a lifeline of early Central Texas travel and trade. A two-story home added about 1870 later served as the residence of Dr. William M. Owen, a well-known local physician and businessman.