W. N. Huling Home, 1877

Lampasas, TX

Built in 1884 on land owned by John R. Guynes, this two-story Italianate commercial building first sheltered the First National Bank before passing through a series of Lampasas merchants. J. N. Manuel bought it in 1900, and Manuel Hardware Co. occupied it for the next sixty years. With its faux-masonry façade, rough-cut limestone walls, chamfered corner entry, and ornate metal cornice, the restored building is a fine survivor of frontier-town commercial architecture.

Lampasas, TX

After an August 1884 fire gutted much of downtown Lampasas, developer John B. Higdon sold a lot to legislator David W. Phillips, who raised the eastern half of this adjoining pair of buildings; grocers J. M. and A. L. Trosper built the other half about the same time. With their limestone construction, four-bay facades, and round-arched transoms, the buildings became a fixture of the town square. Over the years they housed cafes, saloons, a newspaper, a bootmaker's shop, a bowling alley, and much else.

Lampasas, TX

In 1902 Lampasas businessmen hired a drilling company to hunt for oil on W.B. Abney's land but struck sulphur water instead, prized at the time for its supposed medicinal virtues. Abney and his son turned the flowing well into a swimming pool in 1927, and "Abney's Plunge" became a beloved local attraction until the school district bought the site and converted it to a play area in the 1950s.

Lampasas, TX

In May 1885, inspired by the American Bankers Association, two young Lampasas Springs bankers, Frank R. Malone and E. M. Longcope, wrote to the Galveston News urging a Texas counterpart—and touting their spa town as the perfect convention site. The appeal drew a swift response, and on July 23, 1885, thirty-one bankers gathered at the Park Hotel to found what became the oldest and largest state bankers association in the nation. One of its early resolutions, calling for the chartering of state banks, became Texas law in 1905.