The Leake Building

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about the Leake Building in Grimes County. Now, some buildings just sit there. This one has been sitting there and meaning something since 1873, and that is a different thing entirely.

Walter J. and Julia C. Peterson put up a one-story frame business house that year, modest enough, the kind of structure that says a town is getting started and intends to keep going. Then 1885 comes around, and somebody decided one story was not enough story.

Native sandstone walls went up, a whole second floor got added, and just like that the place had heft. The kind of heft that says, we are not going anywhere. One year after that, in 1886, a man named John Wesley Leake came along and bought the property.

Now, the marker tells us Leake was born in 1852 and lived all the way to 1940, and in between those two years he packed in quite a life. Builder. Horse breeder.

Race track owner. That is not one identity, friend, that is three, and any one of them would be enough to make a man memorable in a county's history. Leake and his descendants held onto that building for more than eighty years.

More than eighty years of the same family watching the same sandstone walls anchor the same corner while the world outside rearranged itself completely. The Victorian commercial structure housed many important firms over that time, the marker doesn't name them all, but the building remembers. Some structures are just real estate.

The Leake Building kept score.

What the marker says

Originally a one-story frame business house built in 1873 by Walter J. and Julia C. Peterson, this structure was enlarged in 1885. Native sandstone walls and a second story were added. John Wesley Leake (1852-1940), a builder, horse breeder, and race track owner, bought the property in 1886. He and his descendants owned the building more than 80 years. The Victorian commercial structure has housed many important firms. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1978