Greenslade Drug Store

Duane's take

Here's how the marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Now, most buildings don't last long enough to earn a reputation. They go up, they come down, and the only thing left is a faded photograph nobody can identify.

But every once in a while, somebody builds something the right way: iron, masonry, wood. And that building just refuses to quit. Out in Kaufman County, R.

C. Dansby put one of those buildings up in 1891. A drug store, built from materials that weren't asking any favors from time.

Iron beams running exposed along the ceiling, holdin' that roof up like they've got something to prove. Windows designed with upper and side panels that fold open for ventilation (before air conditioning was even a thought in anybody's mind, the building was already workin' out its own solution). Modified Spanish architecture giving the whole thing a character that stood apart from everything around it.

Dansby built it solid. That much is plain. Then, in 1919, Smith E.

Greenslade came into the picture. He bought the place, put his name on it (Greenslade Drug Store), and something interesting happened. Or rather, something interesting didn't happen.

It didn't get sold off again. It didn't get torn down. It didn't get swallowed up by someone else's ambition or somebody else's ledger.

The Greenslade family held onto it. Still in the Greenslade family, the marker says, and you can feel the weight of that word: still. Those exposed iron beams are still up there, doin' exactly what they were put there to do.

The folding window panels are still there, ready to catch a breeze. The modified Spanish architecture is still standin' in Kaufman County, same as it was when the nineteenth century was tryin' to figure out what the twentieth was going to look like. Some things get built to last.

And some things actually do.

What the marker says

Built 1891 by R. C. Dansby; of iron, masonry, wood. Sold to Smith E. Greenslade, 1919; still in Greenslade family. Exposed iron beams support the roof. Windows have upper and side panels that fold for ventilation. Modified Spanish architecture. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968