Ryus Store Building

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. We're talking about a building in Graham, Young County, and friends, this one's got layers. Set your mind back to 1879.

Druggist Joseph E. Ryus had already lost one store on this very lot. Lost it to fire.

His frame store, gone. Now, some men would have taken that as a sign and moved on down the road. Not Ryus.

Born in 1848, he had some fight left in him. He rebuilt, and this time he built smart. Local bricks, made right there in the area, stacked up into a structure that fire was going to have a much harder time arguing with.

That was 1879, same year his drugstore opened back up. But here's where this building starts living a double life. That large room upstairs, the one sitting right above all those medicines and tonics, that became something else entirely.

Judge Andrew P. McCormick held his first courtroom up there. His very first.

Because 1879 was also the year Graham was named the site of a federal district court. Think about that. You walk in off the street for a headache remedy, and somewhere above your head, federal justice is being dispensed.

That court eventually moved on to Abilene, but the building stayed. Then comes 1892. The Knights of Pythias, Corinthian Lodge Number 143, purchased the building, and they've been meeting on that upper floor ever since.

A drugstore, a federal courtroom, and a lodge hall, all stacked up in one structure of locally made bricks. Joseph E. Ryus passed in 1909, but the building he raised from the ashes of the one before it is still standing in Graham, still holding its stories in those old walls.

What the marker says

Druggist Joseph E. Ryus (1848-1909) built this structure of locally made bricks in 1879 after his frame store on this lot burned. The large room above Ryus's drugstore served as Judge Andrew P. McCormick's first courtroom in 1879 when Graham was named site of a federal district court, which later moved to Abilene. Since purchasing the building in 1892, Knights of Pythias Corinthian Lodge No. 143 has used the upper floor as a meeting hall. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1974