HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded AgeProgressive & Modern Era

W. L. Garrett Building

Pittsburg, Camp County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Constructed in the 1890s, this building began as a one-story commercial structure. W. L. Garrett (1867-1931) bought the property in 1902 for his mercantile business and in 1923 added a second story. In addition to Garrett's store, the building also housed other retail businesses and medical offices over the years. A landmark structure in Pittsburg, the Garrett Building is simple in design, featuring an inset entry and a corbelled brick cornice. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Built in the 1890s as a modest one-story storefront, this brick building grew with the small East Texas town of Pittsburg. W. L. Garrett bought it in 1902 for his mercantile trade and added a second story in 1923, and over the decades it also sheltered other shops and doctors' offices. Its corbelled brick cornice and inset entry make it a quiet landmark of Main Street commercial life.

Why it matters

Everyday commercial buildings like this one anchored the business districts of thousands of American small towns, marking the rhythm of local enterprise across generations.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • Β· W. L. Garrett

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

Site of First Carnegie Library in Texas

Pittsburg, TX

In 1898, at the request of a local coal-mining firm, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie put up $5,000 to match community pledges and build the first of 31 Carnegie libraries in Texas here in Pittsburg. The masonry building did triple duty as library, opera house, and city hall, holding 3,000 books and hosting professional drama, lectures, graduations, and clubs β€” including women stitching supplies for World War I hospitals. It anchored the town's cultural life until a modern school opened in 1926, and the library itself burned in 1939.

Cotton Belt Depot

Pittsburg, TX

The narrow-gauge Texas & St. Louis, better known as the Cotton Belt, reached Pittsburg in 1880 on land the town's founder had donated years earlier for a depot. The surviving station, built in 1901, is a fine local example of Victorian Queen Anne-influenced railroad design, with dormers, twin chimneys, and an attached freight house. It served the line until 1968, long after passenger trains stopped running in 1946.

Abernathy House

Pittsburg, TX

David Harper Abernathy came to Pittsburg as a boy in 1864 and grew into one of the town's leading merchants and Methodist churchmen, running the family dry goods business he learned in Nashville. In 1896 builder George Barber raised this two-story Queen Anne home for the family, with its wraparound porch, spindle work, and front gable. Much of the interior survives, a physical record of a family that shaped the town for a century.

Ferndale Club

Leesburg, TX

In 1908, Leesburg physician and banker J.B. Florence and his friends dreamed up a hunting and fishing retreat, buying land along Lilly Creek and damming Flat Ford to create Ferndale Lake. Chartered in 1909 and drawing members from nearby Pittsburg, the club built a clubhouse in 1912 for guests and social gatherings. More than a century on, it still operates with professionally managed wildlife habitat and fish stocking.