Murphy Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm just the voice along for the ride. Now, Jefferson, Texas has always drawn folks with ambition, and in 1850 two brothers from Tennessee came rolling in with plenty of it. John C.

Murphy, born in 1816, and James M. Murphy, born in 1820, set up a wholesale cotton firm and made names for themselves as prominent businessmen in the riverfront district. And somewhere in the early 1850s, they built a structure right there on the waterfront to warehouse all that commerce.

Just a sturdy building doing sturdy work. Nothing flashy. Nobody was writing songs about it.

Not yet, anyway. Then 1877 comes along, and somebody installs a Diebold safe inside those walls. A Diebold safe.

The kind built to outlast the ambitions of any man who ever tried to crack one open uninvited. Now hold that thought, because that safe is going to have the last word here. The years kept rolling.

By 1884, the building got remodeled and handed over to county offices and courts. The cotton was long gone, but the walls held. Come 1915, the city of Jefferson took it over as city hall, and the place became something of a community hub, making room for the Chesterfield Dance Club and the Jefferson Volunteer Fire Department under the same roof.

Business, dancing, and firefighting. That is a building earning its keep. And through all of it, through every remodel and every reinvention, that Diebold safe installed in 1877 never left.

It is still there. Still serving the building, which is once again used for county offices. The Murphy brothers built for the long haul, and that safe, well, it just kept agreeing with them.

What the marker says

Brothers John C. Murphy (1816-71) and James M. Murphy (b. 1820) of Tennessee came to Jefferson, Texas, in 1850. They owned a wholesale cotton firm and were prominent businessmen. In the early 1850s they built this structure as a warehouse in the riverfront district. In 1884 the building was remodeled for county offices and courts. In 1915 it became the city hall, with space for the Chesterfield Dance Club and the Jefferson Volunteer Fire Department. A Diebold safe, installed in 1877, continues to serve the building, again used for county offices.