J. P. Schneider Store

Jacob Schneider came to this corner by a hard road. His father died when he was fourteen, and he is said to have made ammunition for the Confederacy and run errands for the Union Army before a merchant gave him work. He grew a shop that sold cotton and furs, shoes, farm tools and even coffins, with a wagon yard for fifty wagons, since in the early years the Colorado had no bridge and farmers forded it. He later sat on the city council for many years. Fire damaged the building in 1971, and restoration saved it from demolition.

What the plaque says

J. P. Schneider Store In the mid-1860s, shortly after the Civil War, Jacob Peter "Jake" Schneider (1852-1925) began working in William Brueggerhoff's general mercantile store, and part-time as a legislative page in the Capitol. About 1870, he and his mother, Margarita Schneider, opened a store on the corner across the street (north). Brueggerfhoff helped stock the enterprise in payment of a debt. In 1873, as the business expanded, and Schneider built this two-story brick structure, and converted the older building into storage space, called the "flour house". The Schneider residence was also across the street. The basement of the Schneider store contained meats, vats of wine and whiskey, and molding cheeses, and the upper two stories housed large stocks of food and clothing. Schneider also operated a wagon yard south and west of the store, complete with two camp houses for travelers. After Schneider's death the store was managed by a son F. Ralph Schneider, who added a saloon in the rear of the building after the repeal of prohibition in 1933. Business operations ceased in 1935, and the structure has since housed electrical and lumber companies, and as art gallery. It has been damaged twice by fire in recent years, and is still owned by the Schneider family. (1974)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Capitol — 0.8 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.9 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 1.2 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.
• Texas State Cemetery — 1.3 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.

More markers nearby

• H&TC and I&GN Depots — 0.2 mi
• Congress Avenue — 0.2 mi
• Original Site of First Methodist Church of Austin — 0.3 mi
• Organization of First Protestant Worship in Austin — 0.4 mi