Old Hollis Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm passin' it along to you. On the courthouse square of San Augustine, there stands a building that has seen more history than most structures twice its age. The Old Hollis Building.

And the story starts before it was ever built. On that very ground once stood the imposing home of John P. Border, a merchant whose place was known around town as the Yellow House.

You can imagine it, can't you. A home grand enough to earn its own name, sitting right there in the heart of San Augustine. Also on that same site, at some point, stood the office of K.

L. Anderson, the last vice president of the Republic of Texas. The last one.

Think about what that means. That ground had stories soaked into it before I. H.

Hollis ever drove the first nail. In 1889, Hollis built his structure there, and it rose up to carry on whatever legacy that address had already accumulated. Then came 1890, and with it, the great fire.

Now San Augustine knows what that means, and if you don't, just understand that a great fire in a nineteenth-century Texas town is exactly as bad as it sounds. Buildings fell. History burned.

But the Hollis Building stood. It escaped. Came through on the other side still standing while others did not.

After that, it just kept on being useful. Businesses came and went through its doors across the years, and in 1911 it housed the post office, which means folks were picking up their letters and their parcels inside walls that had already outlasted a fire and watched a republic come and go. Some buildings just refuse to be finished with their story.

What the marker says

Built 1889 by I. H. Hollis. Succeeded the imposing home ("Yellow House") of John P. Border, merchant. Also on site was office of K. L. Anderson, last vice president of Republic. This structure escaped the great fire, 1890. Has housed many businesses, including post office, 1911. (1968)