DUANE
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Duane's take
The official marker's the source here, and I'm just the one bringin' it to life for you. Now settle in, because this little sandstone building in Chico, Texas has been holdin' stories inside its walls for well over a century, and it earned every one of them. It starts with a man named Alexander Virgil Hanna.
Born in 1860, and by 1893 he had decided that Chico needed a proper drugstore. So he went ahead and erected one, built out of native sandstone, the kind of structure that tells you right away its builder wasn't planning to go anywhere. And Hanna wasn't just thinking about medicine.
He looked at that building and saw possibility. He put in office space for a doctor. A lawyer.
A jeweler. And then, the one that really must have turned heads in town, the first telephone switchboard in Chico. All under one roof.
That sandstone building was practically the center of the known world. Hanna ran things for a good long while, but in 1920, he sold the business to a man named Rueben R. Robinson, born 1872.
Robinson took the reins, and when he passed, the store didn't skip a beat. His daughter LaBeth and her husband William Marston Mead kept it going right on after Robinson's death. William Marston Mead died in 1968, and still that building stood.
In 1973, Bobby and Frances Richey purchased it, adding their name to a legacy that stretches all the way back to that sandstone cornerstone Alexander Virgil Hanna laid down in 1893. Three families. One building.
And that old native sandstone hasn't moved an inch.
What the marker says
Alexander Virgil Hanna (1860-1921) erected this native sandstone structure to house his drugstore in 1893. He provided office space in this building for a doctor, lawyer, jeweler, and the first telephone switchboard in Chico. Hanna sold the business in 1920 to Rueben R. Robinson (1872-1955), whose daughter and son-in-law, LaBeth and William Marston Mead (d. 1968) continued to operate the store after his death. It was purchased in 1973 by Bobby and Frances Richey.