DUANE
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Duane's take
The way the official marker tells it, here's what Duane's got for you on the Cueto Building. Now, when you're rollin' through Cameron County and you catch sight of a building with a corbelled brick cornice and a parapet that still carries itself with a certain dignity, you're lookin' at something that has a story worth slowin' down for. This building went up in 1893.
That's the year Don Andres Cueto decided his operation had outgrown whatever space it had been squeezed into before, and he built something worthy of the business he was running. Don Andres was a native of Spain, born in 1862, and he knew how to do commerce right. His grocery and mercantile trade, retail and wholesale both, had been expanding, and this new structure was the answer to that growth.
The business went by the name La Nueva Libertad. The New Liberty. Now that is a name that sounds like a declaration, and the building behind it backed it up.
Inside and around that address you had a retail store, storerooms, a carriage house, and, here's the detail that tends to stick with people, domed brick bakery ovens. Not one. Ovens, plural.
Somebody was feeding a community out of this place. The architecture itself is considered a fine example of late nineteenth century South Texas commercial style, and when you look at that corbelled brick cornice and that parapet, you understand why. Don Andres Cueto lived until 1927, long enough to see the twentieth century settle in around him.
But what he built in 1893 kept right on standing. La Nueva Libertad. It had a name like a promise, and it kept it.
What the marker says
A fine example of late Nineteenth Century South Texas commercial architecture, this building was constructed in 1893 to house the expanding grocery and mercantile, retail and wholesale business of Don Andres Cueto (1862-1927), a native of Spain. "La Nueva Libertad," as the business was known, included a retail store, storerooms, a carriage house, and domed brick bakery ovens. Prominent features of the building include its corbelled brick cornice and parapet. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1985