Site of Svrcek Building
Fayetteville, Fayette County, Texas
Marker Inscription
SITE OF SVRCEK BUILDING AN 1890s COMMERCIAL BUILDING ON THIS SITE WAS USED THROUGHOUT THE 20TH CENTURY. THE RECTANGULAR PLAN, FRAME CONSTRUCTION BUILDING FEATURED A FALSE FRONT, SUPPORTED AWNING AND DOUBLE DOORS FLANKED BY WINDOWS. FRANK SVRCEK OWNED SEVERAL LOTS ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE SQUARE, INCLUDING THIS BUILDING WHICH REMAINED IN THE SVRCEK FAMILY UNTIL 1979. THE MEITH BROTHERS FROM NEW ULM HAD A MEAT MARKET HERE IN THE 1920s. TWO RESTAURANTS, THE MYNAR CAFÉ FROM THE 1930s TO 1964, AND EVELYN’S CAFÉ UNTIL 1975, WERE ALSO HERE. LATER THE BUILDING WAS USED AS STORAGE. IT WAS VACANT WHEN IT WAS RAZED IN 2012.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
An 1890s commercial building on Fayetteville's square anchored a corner of small-town life through the twentieth century, its false front and double doors sheltering a succession of businesses. Owned by the Svrcek family until 1979, it housed the Meith brothers' meat market in the 1920s and two beloved cafés—the Mynar and Evelyn's—before fading into storage. Vacant at last, it was razed in 2012, leaving only this marker.
Why it matters
The site records the everyday commerce of a Czech-Texan town square, where family-owned shops and cafés wove the fabric of community life for over a century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Fayetteville grew up around its town square, and in the 1890s a square like this was the beating commercial heart of a Central Texas farming town. This was Czech and German settlement country, where immigrant families had built a tight-knit community, and the businesses on the square were where that community met the wider world — bought its goods, sold its harvest, and lingered over coffee and conversation.
The building that once stood on this site was born in that moment. A modest frame commercial structure with a false front — that tall, flat facade that made a one-story building look grander from the street — it was the classic architecture of the American small-town square. A supported awning shaded the sidewalk, and double doors flanked by windows welcomed customers in. Nothing fancy; just the practical, dignified face of Main Street commerce.
What followed was the long twentieth century, and this one address lived through the whole of it. From the horse-and-wagon 1890s through the automobile age and beyond, the building kept its place on the north side of the square while the world around it changed completely.
People & events
The building's story is really the story of the families and businesses that passed through it. Frank Svrcek owned several lots on the north side of the square, this one among them, and the property stayed in the Svrcek family until 1979 — nearly nine decades under one family's name, a thread of continuity that outlasted almost everything else on the block.
Inside, the tenants changed with the times. In the 1920s the Meith brothers, who came from nearby New Ulm, ran a meat market here — the kind of place where a town bought its Sunday roast and caught up on the week's news. Then came the cafés, and this is where the building lodged itself in local memory: the Mynar Café served from the 1930s until 1964, and Evelyn's Café carried on until 1975. For four decades, in other words, this was a place where Fayetteville came to eat.
After the last café closed, the building slipped into a gentler old age as storage, its busy days behind it. It stood vacant at the end, and in 2012 it was razed. The marker is what remains — a way of keeping the address's long life from vanishing along with its walls.
Its place in the American story
Every American small town has a building like this, and that is exactly why it matters. The national story isn't only made of battles and presidents; it's made of meat markets and cafés, of a family owning a storefront for eighty-odd years, of the ordinary square where a community's daily life actually happened. The Svrcek building is a stand-in for tens of thousands of such places.
Its arc also traces a familiar and poignant American pattern. The small-town commercial square thrived when farm communities did their shopping and socializing close to home. As highways, automobiles, and larger towns pulled that commerce elsewhere across the twentieth century, buildings like this one lost their tenants, drifted into storage, and eventually came down. To read this marker is to read the quiet decline of Main Street written on a single lot.
There is a distinctly immigrant-American layer here, too. The names on the building's history — Svrcek, Meith, Mynar — are the surnames of the Czech and German families who built Central Texas, running the shops and cafés that turned a settlement into a town. Their everyday enterprise is as much a part of the national story as anything grander.
If you visit
This is a marker for the imagination, because the building itself is gone. Stand on the north side of the Fayetteville square, read the description of a false-fronted frame storefront with its awning and double doors, and rebuild it in your mind's eye on the empty spot before you. That act of imagining is the whole experience.
Then let the square around you fill in the rest. Fayetteville's historic square is remarkably intact, so the neighboring buildings show you exactly what this one's world looked and felt like — the scale of it, the storefronts, the sidewalks where an awning once threw its shade. Picture the Meith brothers' meat market, and then the long lunch-counter years of the Mynar and Evelyn's cafés.
It makes a perfect stop on a slow walk around one of Central Texas's classic town squares. Markers like this reward the traveler who lingers — who understands that an empty lot can hold a century of a community's meals, business, and memory, if someone takes the time to tell you so.
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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Related people
- · Frank Svrcek
Themes & tags
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