White Elephant Saloon
Albany, Shackelford County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(Blach Building) The land on this site, Lot 9, Block 3 of the original town plat of Albany, was purchased in 1882 by noted local restauranteur Charles Hartfield. He planned to build a restaurant next door, and the pending establishment was much anticipated by local diners. Shortly before his death in 1884, Hartfield sold the lot to Alabama businessman Max Blach. Blach was vice president of the Albany Water Company. He and partner N. H. Burns brought a system of running water to the town in 1884. Blach began construction on this one-story native stone structure in March 1884. The building was completed in April and leased to J. R. Davis, who put it to its most infamous use. The White Elephant Saloon opened for business in May 1, 1884. Among its instantly popular features was a white elephant display which was removed from the rooftop early in the establishment's heyday. The perpetrators were believed to be citizens who disapproved of the saloon's raucous business. Despite its popularity, Davis announced his intent to close the saloon in February 1886. The Blach Building soon was leased to W. M. Wigley, who operated a dry goods and furniture store on this site. Succeeding furniture businesses occuped the building for many years. Blach's heirs sold the structure to S. C. Coffee in 1919. Coffee sold it in 1923 to T. J. Crow, who conveyed it to Albany businessman L. H. Hill (1859-1932) in 1925. The structure was used for various purposes over the years; it was the home of The Albany News in the 1940s and was the workshop and office of a pipe organ maker in the 1950s and 1960s. The Hill family maintained ownership of the edifice until 1977. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1998
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On a corner of frontier Albany's original town plat, Alabama businessman Max Blach—who helped bring running water to the town—built this native-stone building in 1884. Leased to J.R. Davis, it opened that May as the raucous White Elephant Saloon, complete with a rooftop white elephant that disapproving citizens soon tore down. After the saloon closed in 1886, the building housed furniture stores, a newspaper, and even a pipe-organ maker's workshop across nearly a century.
Why it matters
It preserves the boisterous saloon culture of the West Texas frontier and the way one sturdy stone building served a small town through a century of changing trades.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Albany rose in the years after the Civil War, out in Shackelford County on the West Texas frontier, during the sprawling era of the Gilded Age when new towns were being platted, surveyed, and sold off lot by lot. The very address of this building — Lot 9, Block 3 of the original town plat — is a small monument to that moment, when a town was still a fresh grid of hopeful rectangles waiting to become streets and storefronts.
This was a place stitching together the ordinary machinery of civilization on the edge of settlement. In the early 1880s the town gained something as fundamental as running water, and the men who brought it were local businessmen investing in the future of a community they believed would last. A frontier town measured its coming-of-age not only in saloons and gunfire but in waterworks, stone buildings, and dry-goods stores.
Against that backdrop, a single sturdy building of native stone was a statement of permanence. In a landscape of temporary structures and quick fortunes, stone said someone intended to stay.
People & events
The story of this lot begins with appetite, literally. In 1882 the noted local restaurateur Charles Hartfield bought the land, planning to build a restaurant next door, an establishment much anticipated by the town's hungry diners. But Hartfield died in 1884, and shortly before his death he sold the lot to Max Blach, an Alabama businessman who had come to Texas and made himself useful in a very concrete way — as vice president of the Albany Water Company, he and his partner N. H. Burns brought running water to the town in 1884.
Blach began raising this one-story native stone building in March 1884 and finished it in April. He leased it to J. R. Davis, who gave it its most infamous chapter: on May 1, 1884, it opened as the White Elephant Saloon. Among its instantly popular features was a white elephant display mounted on the rooftop — until it was removed early in the saloon's heyday by parties believed to be citizens who disapproved of the establishment's raucous ways. It is a wonderfully telling little episode: the saloon's own signboard, hauled down by its neighbors.
Despite the crowds, Davis announced he would close the saloon in February 1886, and the building's long second life began. It became a dry-goods and furniture store under W. M. Wigley, then passed through a chain of owners — sold by Blach's heirs to S. C. Coffee in 1919, on to T. J. Crow in 1923, and to Albany businessman L. H. Hill in 1925. Over the decades it housed The Albany News in the 1940s and, remarkably, the workshop and office of a pipe organ maker in the 1950s and 1960s. The Hill family held the building until 1977.
Its place in the American story
The American frontier saloon looms enormous in our imagination — all swinging doors and tall tales — and this building lets you meet the real thing, complete with the detail that so rarely survives: the town pushed back. A rooftop white elephant torn down by disapproving citizens is the whole tension of the frontier in miniature, the boisterous new economy of a boomtown rubbing against the neighbors who wanted a respectable place to raise families.
But the deeper American story here is what happened after the saloon closed. This one modest stone structure went on to shelter a dry-goods store, furniture businesses, a newspaper, and a craftsman building pipe organs — a single building serving a small town through nearly a century of changing trades. That is how most historic buildings actually earn their keep: not by staying frozen at their most famous moment, but by quietly adapting, decade after decade, to whatever the town needed next.
And it is worth remembering that the man who built it was better known for water than whiskey. The same person who helped pipe running water into a frontier town also put up the building that became its rowdiest address — a reminder that the people who built the West were rarely one thing only.
If you visit
Look first at the material: native stone, cut and laid by hand in the spring of 1884. A building like this reads differently from the wood-front stores we imagine on a frontier street — it was built to outlast its builders, and it has. Let your eye settle on the walls and you are looking at the actual fabric of Gilded Age Albany.
Then picture the roofline as it was for a short while in the 1880s, crowned with the white elephant that gave the saloon its name — and imagine the night the neighbors came to take it down. It is one of the rare frontier stories where you can practically see both sides of the argument standing in the same street.
This is a natural stop for anyone drawn to the real West Texas frontier rather than the movie version. As you stand here, run the building's whole résumé through your mind — saloon, store, newspaper office, organ-maker's workshop — and you will find you are looking not at a single moment in history but at a century of a small town's life, all held inside one set of stone walls.
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
- · Max Blach
- · Charles Hartfield
- · J.R. Davis
Themes & tags
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