DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker at this site tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some families put down roots. The Michel family — they put down a whole pharmacy.
Ernst Gustav Michel, born in Germany in 1865, came to Burnet and in 1891, he and his wife Lillie Agnes opened a drugstore right here on this spot. That's where our story begins, and friend, it does not end quietly. The first store stood until 1905, when fire took it.
Gone. But Ernst Michel wasn't the kind of man who takes a hint from a fire. He built back — and when he built back, he built up.
Three stories. Three. The first floor, your drugstore and soda fountain, the kind of place you'd linger over something cold on a hot Texas afternoon.
The second floor — now here's where it gets good — an opera house. Seating for three hundred people, right there above the pill bottles. And the top floor?
That's where the Michel family lived. Above the soda water and the arias both. That three-story edifice stood as something to behold, and then 1927 came along and fire came with it.
This time it wasn't just the store. That blaze took an entire city block. The whole thing, gone again.
You'd think that might be the end of the Michel story at this location. You would be wrong. All four Michel children who lived to adulthood studied pharmacy.
Every single one. And the Michel family has kept a drugstore running at this very site since 1891 — through fire, through loss, through whatever else the years saw fit to throw at them. Ernst Gustav Michel died in 1930.
But the drugstore? Still here. Some things, it turns out, don't burn.
What the marker says
Ernst Gustav Michel (1865-1930), a native of Germany, and his wife, Lillie Agnes, opened a drugstore at this site in 1891. After fire destroyed the first store in 1905, Michel built a 3-story edifice here. The first floor housed the drugstore and soda fountain. The second floor was an opera house with seating for 300 people. The top floor had the family's living quarters. That structure burned in a fire that destroyed an entire city block in 1927. All four Michel children who lived to adulthood studied pharmacy. The Michel family has operated a drugstore at this location since 1891.