Early Bank Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture yourself standing on a street in Crockett, Houston County, Texas, looking up at a building that's got cast iron across its face and pressed tin ornamentation catching the light — a structure that is, as the marker puts it, a typical late nineteenth century Texas commercial building. Typical, sure.

But the story inside those walls is anything but. Now, W.E. Mayes was born in 1837, and by the time he'd settled into the mercantile business, folks around Crockett had figured something out about the man: he was reliable.

And when you're reliable in a frontier Texas town, people start trusting you with things beyond dry goods and hardware. So somewhere in the 1880s, Mayes started doing something a little extra for his customers. He took care of their cash and their currency.

He issued loans. He extended credit. Right there in the mercantile store.

No marble columns, no brass teller windows — just a man behind a counter who kept his word. Now here's where it gets interesting. By 1891, Mayes was ready to think bigger.

He and a man named H.F. Moore were in the process of organizing something more formal — the First National Bank of Crockett. And so in 1891, Mayes sold that business, the banking end of things he'd been running out of his store, to that very institution.

The bank was ready. The building, though? That came next.

This structure — the one with the cast iron front and the pressed tin finery — was built in 1893 and 1894. Born out of a mercantile store's back-room banking operation, now standing as a proper commercial building in its own right. Mayes himself lived until 1915, long enough to see what that little idea of his had grown into.

The building kept on standing long after him, too. All the way to 1954, when it was sold to a woman named Mary Aldrich — abstractor. A woman whose whole profession was untangling the history of property and title.

There's something almost poetic about that. The building that held the money and the loans and the credit of an entire community ended up in the hands of someone whose job was to read the past written into land records. Some buildings just seem to know where they belong.

What the marker says

A typical late 19th Century Texas commercial building, with cast iron front and pressed tin ornamentation. Erected for bank developed in mercantile store of W.E. Mayes (1837-1915). To aid his customers, Mayes in 1880s took care of cash and currency, issued loans and credit; in 1891 sold this business to First National Bank of Crockett, which he and H.F. Moore were organizing. This structure, built 1893-94, was sold 1954 to Mary Aldrich, abstractor. Recorded Texas Historical Landmark - 1972