Partrick Building
Brackettville, Kinney County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1885 Dr. William Partrick commissioned adjoining commercial spaces at this site, operating a drug store in the single story and a dry goods store and hotel in the two-story section. Later outbuildings included a beer vault, windmill, elevated tank and bake oven. Dr. Partrick sold the property to R. Stratton & Co. in 1913. The Partrick Building exhibits the skill of local stonemasons in rough-cut ashlar limestone blocks and finished limestone lintels and windowsills. By the 1950s, a suspended wooden awning replaced the original metal balcony and a stabilizing concrete veneer at the base addressed recurring flood damage.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1885 Dr. William Partrick built these adjoining storefronts in the frontier town of Brackettville, running a drug store on one side and a dry-goods store and hotel on the two-story side, with a beer vault, windmill, and bake oven out back. Local stonemasons showed their skill in the rough-cut ashlar limestone and finished lintels and sills. Sold off in 1913, the building weathered decades of change, including a concrete base added to fight recurring flood damage.
Why it matters
Small-town commercial blocks like this one show how supply towns beside Army posts grew into permanent communities in the late-19th-century West.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · William Partrick
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
John Taini
Del Rio, TX
Born in 1854 near Brescia, Italy, John Taini trained as a stonemason before an American contractor recruited him to work abroad. After building stone structures for the U.S. Army at Fort Clark, he settled in Del Rio, part of a wave of Italian immigrants who arrived in the 1880s, and put his hands on much of the growing town — the Val Verde County Courthouse, churches, railroad housing, jails, bridges, and dams across San Felipe Creek. Beyond the stone he laid, Taini donated land, served as an election judge, and helped lead the Italian Catholic Cemetery before his death in 1929.
Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers' Association
Del Rio, TX
The Edwards Plateau of southwest Texas became sheep-and-goat country in the decades after ranchers like Phillip Palmer and Charles Dissler introduced flocks and herds in the late 1800s. In 1915, alarmed by a wave of livestock thefts, sixty stockmen gathered at Del Rio's Princess Theater to found what became the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers' Association. Thirty signed the charter and chose local rancher J. B. Murrah as first president; the group later moved its headquarters to San Angelo and grew into a major trade and political force.
Max and Anna Stool
Del Rio, TX
Around the turn of the 20th century, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe fanned out across small-town America, often starting as peddlers before opening dry-goods and department stores that anchored growing Main Streets. Max Stool, who had fled an area of Russia once part of Poland, stumbled into Del Rio in 1904 on a westbound train and never left, building 'The Guarantee' department store with his wife Anna. Together they bought land, put up commercial buildings, and coaxed national chains into the young downtown.
Dr. John R. Brinkley
Del Rio, TX
John R. Brinkley made a fortune peddling dubious cures — most infamously goat-gland surgery marketed to restore men's vigor — and pioneered the use of radio to reach a mass audience. Hounded by the American Medical Association and federal regulators, he relocated to Del Rio in 1933 and beamed his message across the country from a powerful 'border blaster' station just over the line in Mexico. Flamboyant and free-spending, he pumped money into the local economy during the Great Depression before authorities finally shut his operation down in 1938.