Site of Svrcek Building

The square this building faced is best seen on Fayetteville's only Sanborn fire-insurance map, drawn in 1917. That map counted 500 people, the town's highest recorded population, with graveled main streets and electric public lights. Around the square it showed five dry goods stores, two hardware stores, seven saloons, a meat market, a baker, two printers, a harness shop, a pool hall, a tailor, a barber and the post office, along with seven houses. The false front this building carried was the square's common device, a parapet that made a modest gabled store look larger and grander.

What the plaque says

Site of Svrcek Building SITE OF SVRCEK BUILDING AN 1890s COMMERCIAL BUILDING ON THIS SITE WAS USED THROUGHOUT THE 20TH CENTURY. THE RECTANGULAR PLAN, FRAME CONSTRUCTION BUILDING FEATURED A FALSE FRONT, SUPPORTED AWNING AND DOUBLE DOORS FLANKED BY WINDOWS. FRANK SVRCEK OWNED SEVERAL LOTS ON THE NORTH SIDE OF THE SQUARE, INCLUDING THIS BUILDING WHICH REMAINED IN THE SVRCEK FAMILY UNTIL 1979. THE MEITH BROTHERS FROM NEW ULM HAD A MEAT MARKET HERE IN THE 1920s. TWO RESTAURANTS, THE MYNAR CAFÉ FROM THE 1930s TO 1964, AND EVELYN'S CAFÉ UNTIL 1975, WERE ALSO HERE. LATER THE BUILDING WAS USED AS STORAGE. IT WAS VACANT WHEN IT WAS RAZED IN 2012. (2012)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Round Top and Festival Hill — 11 mi
  A German village on the old La Bahía Road, named for a house tower, with an 1867 stone church, a Fourth of July kept since 1851 and a concert hall a pianist built without blueprints.
• Monument Hill and Kreische Brewery State Historic Sites — 12 mi
  A shared tomb on the Colorado River bluff for the men of the Dawson fight and the black bean lottery, beside the ruins of a German stonemason's spring-fed brewery.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 14 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 15 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.

More markers nearby

• Site of Svrcek Garage — steps away
• Fayetteville SPJST — steps away
• Fayetteville — steps away
• Phillip James Shaver — steps away