Cassaday Grey Granite Company Office Building

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Cassaday Grey Granite Company Office Building in Llano County. Now settle in, because this one's got ambition, architecture, and the long arm of Wall Street all wrapped up in one sturdy little building. A Llano businessman by the name of Tye Yates Hill put this structure up in 1919.

His purpose was clear: house the offices of the Cassaday Grey Granite Company. And that name, Cassaday Grey, wasn't pulled from thin air. It belonged to a man whose nearby land held something special, a rare deposit of high-quality stone.

You don't find granite like that just anywhere in Texas, and Hill knew it. So he built himself an office worthy of the enterprise. And he built it with some flair, too.

The building wears what's called an Alamotif parapet and arches, features of the mission revival style. That parapet lines the roofline with a kind of noble dignity, the sort of thing that says, we are serious people doing serious business. And for a while, they were.

Then came 1929. The stock market crashed, as you well know, and it did not spare Llano or Tye Yates Hill or his granite business. The business was ruined.

But Hill didn't abandon the building. He put it to other purposes, kept it standing, kept it useful. And that building has kept right on being useful ever since.

Starting in 1967, a number of bakeries have occupied that same site. From granite to bread. There's a kind of poetry in that, a building that once traded in the hardest stone Texas could offer, now warming itself with ovens.

Tye Yates Hill built for the ages, and the ages, it turns out, got hungry.

What the marker says

Llano businessman Tye Yates Hill built this structure in 1919 to house the office of the Cassaday Grey Granite Company, so named for the man whose nearby land contained a rare deposit of the high-quality stone. The building's "Alamotif" parapet and arches are features of the mission revival style. After the 1929 stock market crash ruined his granite business, Hill used the building for other purposes. A number of bakeries have occupied this site since 1967. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1993