Stratton-Stricker Building
Waco, McLennan County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1922, business partners Golladay Stratton, Sr. and Henry J. Stricker purchased land for their expanding furniture company. Architect Henry L. Spencer designed this 1923 neoclassical revival style building with general contractor S.B. Swigert construction. The red brick-clad building includes a basement and five stories with riveted steel framing, strong enough to withstand the devastating 1953 tornado. The building’s unique interior features a grand staircase with ornamental woodwork, pressed-tin ceiling tiles, louvered warehouse-style windows, and a winged-mezzanine level on the second floor. Until the 1980s, Stratton’s three sons operated the business. This building and the furniture company are a reminder of Waco’s original marketplace and downtown district.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1922 partners Golladay Stratton, Sr. and Henry J. Stricker bought this Waco lot for their growing furniture company, and the following year architect Henry L. Spencer designed a five-story neoclassical revival building of red brick over riveted steel. That sturdy frame carried it through the devastating 1953 tornado, and inside it kept a grand staircase, pressed-tin ceilings, and a winged mezzanine. Stratton's three sons ran the business here until the 1980s.
Why it matters
The building anchors the memory of Waco's original downtown marketplace and stands as a survivor of the 1953 tornado that leveled much of the city's core.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Waco in the 1920s was a confident, growing city, and its downtown was the beating heart of central Texas commerce. This was the Progressive and Modern era, when American cities raised sturdy multistory buildings of brick and steel to house the businesses driving their prosperity. A furniture company expanding into a five-story headquarters was exactly the kind of ambition the decade rewarded.
The building rose in an age that believed in permanence and dignity for its commercial architecture. Neoclassical revival — with its echoes of columns, symmetry, and civic solidity — was a popular choice for buildings meant to project stability and success. To clothe a working furniture warehouse in that style was to say the enterprise inside intended to last.
Waco's downtown marketplace was then a dense district of stores and showrooms where the city came to shop, trade, and gather. Buildings like this one gave that district its shape and its skyline, standing as symbols of a downtown at the confident height of the industrial and commercial age.
People & events
The story begins with a partnership. In 1922, Golladay Stratton, Sr. and Henry J. Stricker bought land for their expanding furniture company, and the following year they built to match their ambitions. Architect Henry L. Spencer designed the 1923 neoclassical revival building, and general contractor S. B. Swigert put it up: red brick over a riveted steel frame, five stories tall above a basement.
That steel frame would prove more important than anyone could have guessed. In 1953 a devastating tornado tore through Waco, and the building's sturdy construction carried it through — a testament to how well it had been made, and a stroke of survival that many nearby structures did not share.
Inside, the building was no plain warehouse. It held a grand staircase with ornamental woodwork, pressed-tin ceiling tiles, louvered warehouse-style windows, and an unusual winged-mezzanine level on the second floor — practical retail and storage space given real architectural character. The Stratton family kept the business going here, with the founder's three sons operating it until the 1980s, more than half a century after the doors first opened.
Its place in the American story
The Stratton-Stricker Building tells the American story of the family firm and the downtown it helped build. In the early twentieth century, thousands of such businesses anchored the commercial cores of cities across the country — locally owned, ambitious enough to build in brick and steel, and durable enough to pass from founder to sons. This building is a well-preserved example of that vanished commercial world.
It also stands as a survivor of one of the most destructive tornadoes in American history. The 1953 Waco tornado ranks among the deadliest ever to strike the United States, killing well over a hundred people and flattening a large part of the city's downtown. That this building withstood the storm gives it a second life as a monument — to the disaster, and to the resilience of the community that endured it.
Together, those two meanings make it more than an old furniture store. It is a reminder of how American downtowns were built, how they thrived, and how they weathered catastrophe — the commercial ambition of one era and the hard survival of another, held in a single red-brick frame.
If you visit
Start by simply looking up. Five stories of red brick rise from the street in the restrained, dignified lines of neoclassical revival — architecture built to impress the shoppers and traders of a busy downtown. Let yourself register that this same façade stood through the 1953 tornado while so much around it fell.
If you can glimpse the interior, look for the features that set this building apart from an ordinary warehouse: the grand staircase and its ornamental woodwork, the pressed-tin ceiling tiles overhead, the tall louvered windows, and the distinctive winged-mezzanine level on the second floor. These are the fingerprints of a building meant to be both practical and proud.
Set against the modern streetscape of Waco, the building reads as an anchor to the city's original marketplace — a survivor from the downtown of a century ago. It makes a rewarding stop on a walking tour of Waco's historic core, a place to stand and imagine the bustle of the furniture trade and the storm that could not bring it down.
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
- · Golladay Stratton, Sr.
- · Henry J. Stricker
Related events
- · 1953 Waco tornado
Themes & tags
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