A.P. “Bert” Humphrey gambled on his belief that Somervell County residents would retain a taste for alcoholic beverages when he erected this building in 1896. In that year he temporarily moved his saloon, a pre-existing wooden structure, into the street and on its vacant lot constructed a replacement. This was the most imposing of all the drinking establishments in Glen Rose. He operated it for the next six years, with a saloon downstairs and the meeting hall of the Knights of Pythias fraternal order upstairs. To Humphrey’s undoubted disappointment, in 1902 the precinct encompassing Glen Rose voted “dry” in a local-option alcohol election. The entrepreneur closed his drinking emporium and sold the building to the First National Bank. It was used to house the bank’s financial operations until 1977, when the structure became a library and then the Somervell County Heritage Center. If you look up to the top of the cornice on the front, you can read the “KP” initials that in 1896 identified that floor as the old Knights of Pythias meeting hall.