Otto Reinke Building

The city's Historic Round Rock placard spells the name Rienke and calls Otto Rienke a confectioner and baker who had the two-story building put up in 1878 and left in 1881. Dr. Alexander McDonald bought it in 1885, and his family ran a drugstore here until 1908, with a lodge meeting room upstairs. It later housed a tin shop in 1909, a pool hall in 1916 and, in the 1930s and 1940s, the Sam Bass Cafe, the first of several businesses of that name. The placard dates the fire that gutted it to 1969.

What the plaque says

Otto Reinke Building Erected 1879, three years after Round Rock expansion began at railroad's arrival. Some successive tenants included stores, physician, restaurants. After it was gutted by fire in 1963, architect Martin S. Kermacy and wife, Evelyn, built a modern interior within the Victorian Italianate walls. (1973)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• The Round Rock — 0.7 mi
  A table-shaped stone in Brushy Creek gave Round Rock its name in 1854; the Chisholm Trail crossed the creek near it, and Old Town stayed behind when the railroad pulled the town east.
• Inner Space Cavern — 6.9 mi
  A Georgetown cave found in 1963 when highway engineers drilled test holes, holding Pleistocene fossils and 72-degree rooms that visitors reach by an artificial tunnel.
• Williamson County Courthouse — 8.9 mi
  The fifth Williamson County courthouse, a Beaux Arts building by C. H. Page, rises over a Georgetown square of more than 50 Victorian-era buildings.
• Mount Bonnell — 14 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.

More markers nearby

• Sam Bass' Death Site — steps away
• Round Rock — steps away
• In Memory of The Pioneer Builders — 0.6 mi
• Trinity Lutheran College — 0.6 mi