Gebhardt Bakery

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm gonna give it to you straight. In 1901, a German native by the name of Charles Gebhardt decided that Hillsboro needed something it didn't have yet. A bakery.

The first one the town had ever known. Now, Charles was born in 1874, and he wouldn't live past 1920, but in that stretch of years he left something behind that outlasted him in brick and mortar. Literally.

See, when he started, he was working out of wherever he could manage. But by 1905, a new building had gone up, and Charles moved his operation right into it. Set up the bakery on the ground floor, made the second floor his living quarters.

Home and work, all under one roof. That's the kind of man who means business. And the building itself, well, it was no plain box on a dusty street.

The architect, whoever drew it up, reached into the Romanesque tradition and the Italianate style both, and what came out was something worth looking at. Arched windows on the second floor. Decorative brickwork worked right into the cornice.

And corner turrets, the kind of detail that makes a building stand up a little straighter. A bakery that looked like it belonged in a European city square, sitting right there in Hill County, Texas. Charles ran that bakery out of it, and then time moved on the way time does.

The building didn't sit idle. It went on to house millinery shops, barber shops. Different trades, different hands, same four walls.

That building has been many things to Hillsboro. But it started with one man, one idea, and the smell of fresh bread in the morning.

What the marker says

In 1901 German native Charles Gebhardt (1874-1920) established Hillsboro's first bakery. He moved his business to this building after it was completed in 1905, using the second floor as living quarters. The brick commercial structure exhibits influences of the Romanesque and Italianate styles and features arched second-story windows, decorative brickwork in the cornice, and corner turrets. The bakery building later was used for millinery and barber shops. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983