Industry & Invention

Jefferson, TX

Built in 1854 in the thriving riverport of Jefferson, this antebellum residence blends European design with practical local building, pairing a brick ground floor with framed upper stories and distinctive double iron stairways. Jefferson was then one of Texas's busiest inland ports, and homes like this one signaled the wealth flowing through the cotton economy of the era. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1966.

Jefferson, TX

In 1852, during Jefferson's boom years as a bustling inland riverport, this building served as the warehouse of a mercantile firm with branches in St. Louis and New Orleans. Steamboats reaching Jefferson through Big Cypress Bayou made the town one of the busiest commercial hubs in antebellum Texas. The surviving structure recalls an era when river trade, not rail, ruled the region's economy.

Harlingen, TX

This Harlingen corner began humbly as the site of pioneer Mack Crenshaw's barber shop before the land was deeded to the Planters State Bank in 1917. The bank building rose here, its upper floors leased as offices, and after Planters closed it housed the Valley State Bank from 1924 to 1927. From then until 1965 the Cameron County Irrigation District ran its operations from the building — a fitting tenant in a region whose prosperity depended on watering the Rio Grande Valley.

Village of Upper Brookville, NY

Planting Fields is one of the great surviving estates of Long Island's fabled "Gold Coast," the belt of palatial country places built by America's wealthiest families in the early decades of the twentieth century. Its rolling lawns, formal gardens, and greenhouses were laid out on a grand scale during the era when industrial and financial fortunes reshaped the north shore of Nassau County into a landscape of Tudor halls and manicured parkland. The National Register listing in 1979 recognized both the mansion and its designed grounds as a rare intact example of this vanished world of estate life. Today the property endures as a public arboretum, its horticultural collections open to visitors long after the private era that created it.

New York, NY

On a commanding ridge in Upper Manhattan, Fort Tryon Park overlooks the Hudson from land that industrialist-philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. assembled and gave to New York City, with the park opening in the mid-1930s. This plaque records a further gift in 1941, when Rockefeller set aside ground to enlarge the park with a children's playground. It reflects an era when private benefactors shaped great American public spaces — the same Rockefeller generosity that also brought the Cloisters museum to the park's northern end.

New York, NY

In the bitter winter of 1944, German forces launched their last great offensive on the Western Front, striking through the snow-covered Ardennes forest and bulging deep into Allied lines — the shape that gave the Battle of the Bulge its name. American soldiers, often outnumbered and surrounded, held key crossroads and eventually turned the assault back, in what became one of the largest and costliest engagements U.S. forces fought in Europe. This Staten Island plaza was dedicated on December 16, 2001 — the anniversary of the day that battle began — naming a piece of the New York cityscape in honor of the men who endured it.

Bettie, TX

In the 1850s, families from the Deep South pushed into the piney woods of East Texas and founded the Lafayette community, burying their dead in what became Pleasant Grove Cemetery — the first grave, in 1860, that of a one-year-old child of Georgia immigrants. Land was formally set aside for church and cemetery use in 1870, and in a distinctly local touch, iron ore mined commercially nearby in the 1890s was used to mark the graves of the area's earliest settlers.

Lampasas, TX

In 1877, in a rough-hewn schoolhouse on Donaldson Creek, John R. Allen gathered struggling farmers into what became the first chapter of the Farmers' Alliance in Texas. What began as a self-help group—even tracing stolen livestock through secret officers nicknamed 'Grand Smokies'—swelled into one of the nation's most powerful agrarian reform movements. By the 1890s its thousands of sub-alliances had helped ignite the Populist Party before fading by 1900.

Baltimore County, MD

Half a mile north of Monkton, Pleasant Valley grew up in the mid-19th century as a railroad settlement built around mining iron ore and soapstone, its ore feeding the nearby Ashland Iron Furnace. Named in Civil War records of 1864 and mapped in the 1877 Hopkins Atlas, it grew into a compact village with a station, houses, a tavern, and a hotel wryly called the 'Rat Trap.' When the ore and soapstone veins gave out in the 1890s, the town was dropped from train schedules and swiftly vanished; only crumbling foundations remain along the NCR Trail today.

Borger, TX

When oil struck Hutchinson County in 1926 and the boomtown of Borger sprang up overnight, the county needed a way across the wide, quicksand-laced Canadian River. Commissioners hired a Dallas firm to build a toll bridge at Dixon Point, charging a dime for pedestrians and a dollar for automobiles until its cost was repaid. Nearly half a mile of steel Warren pony trusses made it a distinctive span, and it stands as a relic of the county's oil-boom birth.

Rush Township, PA · est. 1969

About six-tenths of a mile north lie the ruins of an iron forge built by Dr. John Plumbe in 1828, where workers hammered pig iron into "blooms" — semi-refined bars of wrought iron. The raw pig iron was hauled in by mule from the Bald Eagle Valley, a reminder of how rugged and costly moving materials was in early industrial Pennsylvania. The expense of carting the finished iron to the Pennsylvania Canal finally forced the forge to shut down in 1842.

New Braunfels, TX

On a New Braunfels corner that had already hosted two drugstores and a bakery, Kathinka Clemens built this brick commercial building in 1913 for A.C. and Helen Plumeyer, who ran their bakery — also called City Bakery — downstairs and lived above it until 1926. Later tenants ranged from a shoe store to physicians' offices, and the structure's Craftsman-influenced design earned it a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark designation in 2005.

Stinton, TX

Founded in 1923 by Pennsylvania oilman M.L. "Mike" Benedum, the Plymouth Oil Company remade Sinton, Texas, drilling major discoveries on the Welder Ranch in 1935 and near Taft in 1937 while building company housing and offering health and retirement benefits rare for the era. In 1949 executive Mike Griffith organized the Plymouth Oilers, a semi-pro baseball team stocked with paid players and summer college athletes whose games at company-built Oiler Park drew the whole community. The Oilers captured state, national, and world semi-pro championships in 1951 before the team folded in 1957 and the company was sold to Ohio Oil, later Marathon, in 1962.

Beaumont, TX

Reid Tevis pinned on a badge at nineteen and spent his whole life in law enforcement, rising to chief of detectives and then chief of police in Beaumont during the boomtown years that followed the Spindletop oil strike. As chief from 1923 to 1925 he more than doubled the force, reorganized the department, and started a benefit fund for officers. His renowned eye for thieves and pickpockets made him sought after at great public gatherings from the Texas State Fair to Madison Square Garden.

San Antonio, TX

Driven from Polish Silesia by Prussian occupation, conscription, disaster, and poverty, Silesian families followed a missionary priest's glowing letters to Texas between 1854 and 1857. Some pressed on to found Panna Maria, Bandera, and St. Hedwig — the first Polish colonies in the United States — while others put down roots in San Antonio. There, clustered around St. Michael's parish, they registered cattle brands, voted, built homes and businesses, and supplied labor to the city's iron trade, notably George Holmgreen's foundry, forerunner of Alamo Iron Works.

Fort Worth, TX

As Fort Worth boomed from a cattle-trail town into a Gilded Age city, its newly wealthy bankers, cattlemen, and lawyers built grand Victorian homes along a bluff that locals dubbed "Quality Hill." This 1898 mansion, first for a physician and then for the Capps family, came complete with a private golf course, tennis court, and a garage topped by a ballroom. It stands as a survivor of a vanished district of turn-of-the-century opulence.

Pollok, TX

The town of Pollok grew up around lumber in the late 1800s, when Richard Blair built the settlement's first sawmill beside a new railroad and the Bodan Lumber Company followed by 1899. Sawmill owner Louis Lipsitz donated the land for this cemetery, whose first burial—a child named Fannie DeBenon—came in 1899. Among its stones are the graves of veterans and a Woodmen of the World marker, fitting emblems for a community built on timber.

Port Arthur, TX

The Pompeiian Villa is the last survivor of the "dream city" that railroad magnate Arthur E. Stilwell envisioned for Port Arthur at the turn of the century. Built in 1900 as a winter resort home for barbed-wire developer Isaac L. Ellwood, it stood near a mansion of the gambler-financier John W. "Bet-A-Million" Gates. In 1903 it passed to Port Arthur developer George M. Craig, reportedly traded for a ten-percent stake in the company that became Texaco.

Ponta, TX

Ponta began in 1901 as a fresh townsite laid out along the Texas & New Orleans Railroad, first called Hubb for a county surveyor before taking the name Ponta—from the Latin for "bridge"—when its post office opened in 1903. As a shipping point for lumber, cotton, tomatoes, and peaches, it grew stores, banks, gins, and sawmills alongside a hotel, lodge, churches, and schools. The railroad's post-war decline and the post office's 1972 closing quieted the town, but large-scale greenhouse nurseries kept it economically alive.

Fort Worth, TX

Built around 1920 as Fort Worth's Mistletoe Heights was emerging as a fashionable enclave for merchants and professionals, this Spanish Eclectic home was designed by noted local architect Joseph R. Pelich, with a clay tile roof, arched openings, stucco walls and wrought-iron detailing. Its first residents were Dr. Arvel Ponton, who helped establish the city's Protestant Hospital and later his own Pelich-designed clinic, and his wife Faye.

Sherman, TX

Chartered in Sherman in 1909 as the Sherman Overall Manufacturing Company, this maker of workwear was bought by R. F. Pool and his son Carl in 1911 and renamed Pool Manufacturing in 1925. The firm pioneered preshrinking fabric before Sanforization and introduced the durable Cramerton army cloth still used by the U.S. armed forces, all under its color-fast 'Swetpruf' khaki brand. Carl Pool helped bring modern industrial engineering to garment making as the company grew into a multi-building operation shipping nationwide.

Valley Mills, TX

S. A. Pool built this stone house, a store, and a cotton gin on the Bosque River in 1870, using stone from nearby Fitzhugh Hill. When the Santa Fe Railroad prompted Valley Mills to relocate south of the river, this became the oldest house in the "new" town; Mississippi Civil War veteran Robert A. Tibbs bought it in 1891.

Galveston, TX

This modest Greek Revival cottage went up in the 1860s in bustling Galveston, then Texas's greatest port, and passed through a succession of the island's leading citizens—a cattle dealer, the family of a prominent newspaper editor, and a physician who served as city health officer. Each owner left a mark on the little home, which survived into the twentieth century as a witness to Galveston's Gilded Age.

Fremont, NH

In the farming towns of early New England, a "town pound" was a sturdy walled enclosure—most often built of fieldstone—where stray or trespassing livestock were confined until their owners paid a fine to reclaim them. This one was raised in 1820 in the community then known as Poplin, the name the town of Fremont carried before it was rechristened in the mid-19th century. A humble but essential piece of civic infrastructure, the pound served the surrounding farms for over a century and a half before it was finally destroyed around 1973, leaving only its remembered site.

Port Allegany, PA · est. 1948

Where the overland route from the Susquehanna met navigable water, early travelers reached the spot they called "Canoe Place" and traded foot travel for the current. The settlement that grew here thrived on the twin frontier industries of lumber and tanning, drawing on the region's vast forests. By about 1840 it had taken the descriptive name Port Allegany, marking its role as a gateway between valleys.

Port Allegany, PA · est. 1948

Where the overland route from the Susquehanna met navigable water, early travelers reached the spot they called "Canoe Place" and continued their journey by boat. The community that took root here grew on lumbering and tanning, industries fed by the surrounding forests, and became a busy transfer point for people and goods. Around 1840 it adopted the fitting name Port Allegany.

Port Arthur, TX

Steel magnate John W. Gates—a founder of the Texas Company (Texaco)—launched Port Arthur College in 1909 as a memorial to his mother, envisioning a vocational school to feed the region's booming industries with stenographers, accountants, and bilingual clerks for Panama Canal-era trade. Briefly run by the Methodist Episcopal Church as a collegiate institute, it grew into an accredited commercial school whose communications program advanced from wireless telegraphy to radio and television. During World War II it trained some 1,500 Army Signal Corps operators, and in 1975 it became part of the Lamar system, today's Lamar State College–Port Arthur.

Ore City, TX

An antebellum community tied to the Murray League School once stood here but faded after the Civil War, and the area lay quiet until a railroad arrived around 1911. Col. L.P. Featherstone, a charter member of the Port Bolivar & Iron Ore Railway Company, helped link Longview to this region's iron-ore fields, and the new line prompted the platting of Ore City and a rush of settlers and business. Though the railroad stopped running in 1926, the town it created endures.

Beaufort County, NC

Incorporated on March 8, 1705, Bath was North Carolina's very first town, a small but ambitious settlement on the Pamlico River. In 1716 it became home to a customs port of entry, shipping out the tar, pitch, and turpentine — the naval stores — that the region's pine forests yielded in abundance. For a time it was the colony's commercial front door.

Beaumont, TX

From its 1837 founding, Beaumont was served by schooners and sternwheelers on the Neches River, but the shallow three-foot depth of Sabine Lake long capped its ambitions. Dredging at Sabine Pass began in 1876, and after the rival deepwater port at Port Arthur appeared in 1897, Beaumont interests pushed for their own channel—sharing the cost with the federal government to deepen the Neches to 25 feet. The deep-water port and Sabine-Neches waterway officially opened in 1916, growing into a major navigation district.

Brownsville, TX

For centuries, shifting sandbars at Brazos de Santiago Pass frustrated large ships hoping to reach South Texas, despite shipping through the pass dating to the 1500s. A campaign begun in 1906 by Point Isabel fisherman Louis Cabolini eventually convinced federal engineers that a deep-water port was practical. After Brownsville formed a navigation district in 1929, a ship channel was dredged between 1934 and 1936, opening the modern Port of Brownsville.

Allegheny Township, PA · est. 1947

The Allegheny Portage Railroad was a marvel of its age, completed in 1834 to carry canal boats over the mountains that blocked Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Ten inclined planes, of which this was No. 6, hauled the boats and their cargoes up and down the slopes along a 36-mile route. The system let a single boat travel from Philadelphia toward Pittsburgh without unloading, briefly making the state a leader in transportation engineering.

Juniata Township, PA · est. 1947

In the 1830s Pennsylvania stitched its canal system across the Allegheny Mountains with one of the boldest engineering answers of the age: a portage railroad that hauled entire canal boats up and over the ridge on a staircase of inclined planes worked by stationary steam engines and cables. This spot marks Plane No. 6 of the ten that lifted traffic between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Completed in 1834, the 36-mile line closed the last mountain gap in the water route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

Cresson Township, PA · est. 1947

This spot marks the location of Plane No. 5, one of ten inclined planes on the Allegheny Portage Railroad, an ingenious system that hauled canal boats over the mountains by rail between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Completed in the 1830s, it closed the last gap in Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works, allowing freight and passengers to cross the formidable Allegheny ridge. The road to Lilly still traces the old route over the mountain.

Terrell, TX

On February 26, 1903, a citizens' committee chose the farm of Walter C. and Mrs. Porter for the first 'farm demonstration' led by Dr. Seaman A. Knapp of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The wildly successful project proved that scientific methods could transform ordinary farming and gave birth to what became the nationwide agricultural cooperative extension. Today extension work is part of every land-grant university and has been adapted around the world.

Caldwell, TX

Robert U. Porter came to Texas as a boy in 1833, during the Republic-era frontier era of Anglo settlement, and grew the family farm until the surrounding country took the name Porter's Prairie. The imposing double-porched farmhouse he raised here carried the early Greek Revival lines of the Kentucky mansions of his childhood, built with hand-hewn oak joists he is said to have chosen himself. Home to two wives and sixteen children, the intact farmstead—with its nearby chapel and cemetery—still stands as a portrait of a settler family that put down deep roots.

Upper Macungie Township, PA

In the rolling limestone country of the Lehigh Valley, a new American building material was born. In 1871 David O. Saylor began producing portland cement at Coplay, and by November 1889 the region pioneered the commercial use of the rotary kiln — a continuous-process furnace that turned cement-making from a slow batch craft into true industrial mass production. The valley's rich cement rock and rail links let the industry take root and dominate, supplying the mortar and concrete of a rapidly modernizing nation.

Upper Macungie Township, PA · est. 1947

The American portland cement industry was born in the Lehigh Valley, where David O. Saylor first manufactured the material at Coplay in 1871. The region pressed the advantage further in November 1889 with the first commercial use of the rotary kiln, a process that transformed cement from a batch product into a continuous industrial output. Rich local limestone kept the valley at the forefront of the trade for generations.

Upper Nazareth Township, PA · est. 1947

The Lehigh Valley's limestone and cement rock gave rise to America's portland cement industry, and this region led the way. David O. Saylor first produced portland cement at nearby Coplay in 1871, and in 1889 the area saw the first commercial use of the rotary kiln, a breakthrough that made mass production possible. For decades the valley's kilns supplied the concrete that built modern American cities.

Lower Mount Bethel Township, PA · est. 1947

The Lehigh Valley's limestone and cement rock gave rise to America's portland cement industry, and this region led the way. David O. Saylor first produced portland cement at nearby Coplay in 1871, and in 1889 the area saw the first commercial use of the rotary kiln, a breakthrough that made mass production possible. For decades the valley's kilns supplied the concrete that built modern American cities.

San Antonio, TX

In 1880, as the Gilded Age industrialized the American economy, San Antonio investors incorporated the Alamo Roman and Portland Cement Company on this site — the first Portland cement plant west of the Mississippi and only the second in the nation. Cement mixed here helped raise the Texas State Capitol in Austin, until the local raw material ran out and the works closed in 1907. Notably, Mrs. Charles Baumberger, Sr. ran the business from 1880 until it shut down, a rare directing role for a woman in heavy industry of that era.

Post, TX

Cereal magnate C. W. Post founded this planned town on the Caprock in 1907, watering it first by windmill and later from White River Lake. Post envisioned a self-sufficient community sustained by ranching, farming, and industry — anchored by the Postex Cotton Mills, whose sheets and pillowcases gave the town year-round work. By the 1960s it also served as a hub for more than 1,750 oil wells across Garza County.

Glen Rose, TX

Settled in the years after the Civil War, Post Oak took its name from the trees common to Somervell County and grew up around its churches, school, and cemetery. The Rev. Seaborn Foust donated the adjoining parcels that formed the community's core, and the Missionary Baptist church loomed largest in its life. Cotton and fruit gave way to peanuts and cattle, and though many residents left for the cities by the 1940s, construction of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant beginning in 1972 revived the settlement on its eastern edge.

Post, TX

After founding Post City in 1907, cereal manufacturer C.W. Post lured the Santa Fe Railroad to lay tracks in 1910, and the depot followed in 1911. Designed by the noted architect Louis Curtiss in reinforced concrete and terra cotta tile, it matched a family of depots Curtiss built across West Texas at Lubbock, Snyder, and Sweetwater. One of the few Curtiss designs still standing, the depot marks the moment a planned company town joined the national rail network.

Post, TX

C. W. Post established the Postex Cotton Mill in 1912 as part of his dream of diversified income for Garza County farmers and prosperity for the town of Post. It was among the world's first mills to carry cotton from raw bale to finished cloth under one roof, with a gin, bleachery, spinning, weaving, and sewing rooms — 10,000 spindles and 480 looms employing about 250 workers. Its "Garza" brand textiles sold for years, and after a 1956 expansion the mill worked on consignment worldwide.

Post, TX

Cereal magnate C. W. Post founded this cotton mill in 1912 to give the people of his planned West Texas town a market for their crop and steady work close to home. Ambitiously, it was designed to carry cotton through every stage under one roof—from ginned fiber all the way to finished goods—a rare feat of vertical integration for its time.

Poteet, TX

Poteet grew from an 1880s mercantile store run by Francis Marion Poteet, a merchant, blacksmith, and farmer who also carried the mail—so that the area took on his name. Henry T. Mumme bought the business, kept the post office, and in 1910 he and his wife Ida donated 400 acres for a new townsite; Mumme drilled the first artesian well and introduced strawberry farming. The sandy soil and artesian water proved ideal, earning Poteet its title as the "Strawberry Capital of Texas."

Clark County, NV

Seeking economic self-sufficiency, Mormon settlers turned to mining lead at Potosi in the late 1850s, when Nathaniel V. Jones was dispatched to work the “mountain of lead” southwest of the Las Vegas mission, though smelting troubles soon forced the remote mine to close—making it the first abandoned mine in Nevada. California interests reopened it in 1861, building a smelter and stone cabins for a hundred miners, and operations expanded further after the transcontinental railroad reached the county in 1905. During World War I, Potosi served as an important source of zinc.

Coudersport, PA · est. 1982

Potter County was created in 1804 from Lycoming County and, after decades as thinly settled wilderness, was fully organized in 1835. It honors General James Potter, a hero of the Revolutionary War. Its early economy rose from the forests themselves, as lumbering and tanning turned the northern Pennsylvania timberlands into a working landscape, with Coudersport laid out in 1807 as the county seat.

Amarillo, TX

Potter County organized in 1887 and put up its first, humble courthouse in 1888 for just $191. The 1920s oil boom nearly tripled Amarillo's population and studded its skyline with skyscrapers, and the prosperity funded this fifth courthouse, built in 1930–32 for $420,000 by more than 500 local laborers. Designed in a striking Art Deco style with stepped massing and ornamental relief, it was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1996.

Klamath County, OR

In the first years of the 20th century, small water-powered mills were the beating heart of frontier settlements across the Klamath Basin, turning local timber and grain into the lumber and flour that let a community take root. Potter's Mill, standing on Long Prairie Creek, ran only briefly around 1905–1906 before falling silent, a short-lived venture typical of the boom-and-fade rhythm of rural Oregon enterprise. The Klamath County Historical Society placed this marker in 1976 to keep its memory on the land.

Mandeville, LA

Pottery Hill, shaded by the ancient Castain Oak, holds layered evidence of human life reaching back to the late Tchefuncte era around 800 BC and the early Marksville period of the first centuries AD. Pottery shards, bone, and shell deposits show that Native peoples — including the Acolapissa and later the Choctaw — used this ground continuously into the 20th century. Colonial settlers later prized its fine clay, running commercial potteries here until the 1940s.

Big Spring, TX

Joseph Potton, an English-born master mechanic for the Texas & Pacific Railroad, built this Victorian home in Big Spring in 1901, using local Pecos sandstone, iron pillars, and zinc gable decorations from a Fort Worth architectural firm. A school board trustee, Potton retired in 1912 and lived here with his wife, often entertaining guests, before the house passed to their daughter's family. It survives as a well-preserved emblem of the prosperity the railroad brought to West Texas.

Pottstown, PA · est. 2000

Ironmaster John Potts built this handsome Georgian manor in 1752 at the heart of a sprawling 1,000-acre plantation that, within a decade, encompassed an iron forge, gristmills, and other enterprises — along with the town he founded and named for himself. In colonial Pennsylvania, iron was a cornerstone industry, and men like Potts commanded whole working communities around their furnaces and forges. The borough of Pottstown, incorporated in 1815, grew directly from his holdings.

Pottsville, PA · est. 1999

In the mid-1920s the Pottsville Maroons carried this small coal-region town into the young National Football League, and in 1925 they compiled a record many considered the league's best. They capped the season by beating a Notre Dame all-star squad in a heavily promoted pro-versus-college game in Philadelphia — only to be denied the NFL title in a bitter league ruling. Strong local loyalty couldn't keep them, and the franchise left for Boston in 1929.

Beeville, TX

San Antonio businessman Albert Praeger settled in Beeville in the 1890s and opened a hardware store and tin shop. In 1906 he built this handsome Romanesque Revival building to house his trade in buggies, wagons, barbed wire, and tools. In 1925 its upper floor of storage was converted into apartments, and it has anchored the courthouse square ever since.

Eastland, TX

The Eastland County oil boom of 1917–1922 remade the town, funding many of its public and residential buildings. In 1919 the Prairie Oil and Gas Company built housing here for its officials, including this two-story home occupied by Eastland superintendent W. I. Clark. Sinclair Oil bought the operation in 1932 and sold the houses to private owners a few years later.

Deer Park, TX

This pin-connected truss bridge is the last in Texas built by Iowa's Clinton Bridge and Iron Company, first opened in 1891 over the Leon River in what became Mother Neff State Park. Relocated a few miles in the mid-twentieth century, it could no longer bear modern traffic by 1993. Rather than scrap it, transportation and preservation officials moved the span more than 150 miles to this site.

Sealy, TX

German immigrant Adolph Preibisch reached Austin County in 1860 and, after the railroad town of Sealy grew up, hired mason John Colleton to build this brick commercial block in 1886-1887 from local Brazos River clay. Preibisch sold furniture and household goods — and, like many early dealers, made and sold funeral caskets. Over the decades the building housed a grocery, jeweler, and even a saloon-pool hall called "My Place" used in early films, staying in the family until 1946.

Taylor, TX

Taylor grew as a cotton and railroad center, and in 1914 Hugo Hunke built this two-story commercial block to anchor an important downtown corner, with shop space below and offices above. Early tenants included tailors and a grocery, but the building is best remembered as the home of Preslar-Hewitt Pharmacy from 1929 to 1954. Its pilasters, capitals, transoms, decorative tilework, and dentiled entablature typify the era's proud main-street architecture.