DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll let the story speak for itself. Way out in Scurry County, in the year 1909, a man named F. J.
Grayum decided he was going to build a home worth remembering. Now Grayum was an early day druggist — a man who dealt in careful measure and precise craft — and you get the sense he brought that same exacting eye to every single square foot of this place. What he put up was a classical revival style home, the kind that announces itself.
Ionic-pillared porches and balconies stretching across the front and wrapping around the east side. Before you even stepped through the door, this house was already making a statement. And once you got inside, it only doubled down.
Double masonry walls — not one layer, two. Two-inch thick floors underfoot, solid as bedrock. Brass hardware, and not the decorative kind — solid brass.
Eleven-foot ceilings reaching up like the house itself was taking a long, comfortable breath. And to keep all that grandeur warm in the winter, a coal boiler for heating tucked inside, with a large attic overhead rounding the whole thing out. This was not a house built to get by.
This was a house built to last. And last it did, passing through lives and stories along the way. Rancher L.
E. Long lived here for a time — you can almost picture a cattleman moving through those high-ceilinged rooms. Then came D.
P. Yoder, owner of the city light plant, and he filled this home up proper — raised his seven children inside those double masonry walls, under those eleven-foot ceilings, with all that solid brass gleaming around them. Three different lives.
One enduring house. F. J.
Grayum built it in 1909, and it's still standing in Scurry County, telling you exactly who he was without saying a single word.
What the marker says
In 1909 early day druggist F. J. Grayum built this classical revival style home with Ionic-pillared porches and balconies on the front and east side. The double masonry walls and two-inch thick floors show quality workmanship with solid brass hardware, eleven-foot ceilings, a coal boiler for heating, and a large attic. Rancher L. E. Long lived here for a time and D. P. Yoder, owner of the city light plant, raised his seven children in this home. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964