Fred Schimelpfenig Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Picture Plano, Texas, in 1884. The Sanger Brothers put up a one-story brick building, sturdy and square, the kind of structure that looks like it means business, because it did.

A mercantile building, built to last. And it has. But the name most people attach to it belongs to the man who took that building and turned it into something the whole town talked about.

Frederick Schimelpfenig. Now there's a name you earn the right to say slowly. Schimelpfenig ran a dry goods store out of that brick building, and he didn't just run it, he made it the most prosperous dry goods store in Plano.

Most prosperous. Not second, not respectable, the most. That's the marker's word, and we're going to let it stand right there and breathe a moment.

Then came 1895. The fire. The marker doesn't linger on it, and neither should we, except to say that's where Schimelpfenig's run in that building ended.

He moved on to other things, including serving as mayor of Plano from 1902 to 1908. The building, though, kept going. In 1896, a man named J.H.

Gulledge bought it and operated his own dry goods business there, keeping that mercantile tradition alive clear through 1918. Then decades passed, and in 1946 the building was sold to Westway Sportswear. After that came Plano Furniture, then Nooks n Krannies, then several tea rooms, each one finding shelter inside those same original walls, that same original footprint, because here's the quiet miracle of this whole story: the building retains its original size.

Through fires and sales and decades of changing fashions, that one-story brick building the Sanger Brothers raised in 1884 is still exactly the building they put up. Not everything in Texas that endures makes a lot of noise about it.

What the marker says

This building was built in 1884 by the Sanger Brothers and was made into the most prosperous dry goods store in Plano by Frederick Schimelpfenig. Schimelpfenig ran the store until the fire of 1895 and was mayor of Plano from 1902-1908. In 1896, J.H. Gulledge bought the building and operated a dry goods business until 1918. In 1946, it was sold to Westway Sportswear and has held subsequent businesses such as Plano furniture, Nooks "n Krannies and several tea rooms. The building is a one-story brick mercantile building and retains its original size.