Site of Svrcek Garage

Walter Meinen's dealership and Willie Svrcek's pumps marked the automobile's arrival, and the town still shows it. When the historic district was surveyed for the National Register in 2007, it held four historic-age gas stations, two still selling fuel and two turned into antique shops. The finest, on the south side of the square, is red brick with Craftsman details, its canopy resting on heavy brick piers. The usual early station was a one-story block set back from the street with a canopy over the pumps. The survey also counted 63 garages among the outbuildings, second only to sheds.

What the plaque says

Site of Svrcek Garage SITE OF SVRCEK GARAGE FRANK SVRCEK OWNED A COMMERCIAL BUILDING HERE IN THE 1890s. THE RECTANGULAR FRAME BUILDING WITH STEPPED PARAPET HAD TWO PAIRS OF DOORS, ONE TIN AND THE OTHER WOODEN. WALTER MEINEN'S CHEVROLET DEALERSHIP IN THE 1920s, AND LATER HARRY CORDES' GARAGE, HAD A DIRT FLOOR. CUSTOMERS DROVE CARS THROUGH THE TIN DOORS AND DROVE OUT THE BACK AFTER REPAIRS WERE DONE. WILLIE SVRCEK RETURNED FROM WWII SERVICE TO FIND HIS FAMILY'S BUILDING VACANT, THEN OPENED SVRCEK GARAGE, INSTALLING GAS AND KEROSENE PUMPS AND A CONCRETE FLOOR. HE ALSO DIVIDED PART OF THE BUILDING TO BECOME VITEK APPLIANCE. THE BUILDING LATER HOUSED A FEED STORE BEFORE 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 Building — steps away
• Fayetteville SPJST — steps away
• Fayetteville — steps away
• Phillip James Shaver — steps away