Early Jefferson Lodge Building

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Early Jefferson Lodge Building in Marion County. Now settle in, because this one's got layers. Built in the late 1850s, this structure went up when Jefferson, Texas was humming with commerce, a genuine inland port doing serious business along Dallas Street's wharf front.

And right from the start, it was home to the Jefferson Masonic Lodge. Not a bad first tenant. Then the Civil War came rolling through, and during those years, a number of businesses took up residence inside these walls.

The building kept working, kept serving, the way buildings in a busy port town have to. After the war, it found new purpose again, this time housing the Knights and Ladies of Honor of Myrtle, and the Knights of Honor of Jefferson. Organizations, people, commerce, ritual, community.

This building held all of it. Now here's the part that stops you cold when you think about it. Jefferson's Dallas Street wharf front once had a whole row of commercial structures just like this one, Italianate style, purposeful and proud, built to serve a thriving inland port in its heyday.

Every single one of them is gone now. Every one except this. This building is the last one standing.

Late 1850s construction, and it's still here, outlasting the wharf, outlasting the row, outlasting just about everything that once surrounded it. Sometimes the last one left standing is the one with the most to say.

What the marker says

Built in the late 1850s, this building first housed the Jefferson Masonic Lodge. A number of businesses were located here during the Civil War, and later it was used by the Knights and Ladies of Honor of Myrtle and the Knights of Honor of Jefferson. Exhibiting elements of the Italianate style, this is the last remaining example of the commercial-row structures which served Jefferson's Dallas Street wharf front during its heydey as an inland port. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990