Gresham and Company Dry Goods, 112 & 114 NE Barnard Street

William Todd Gresham entered the dry goods business in Glen Rose in partnership with others in 1889, later buying them out. Then about 1902 Gresham and his wife, Hattie, shifted their mercantile enterprise into the masonry store next-door to the left of this building. As the business grew, Hattie, by then a widow, cut a hole through the wall and expanded sales into this adjoining building at 112 NE Barnard Street. The original structure at this site burned in 1926 but was rebuilt within a year. At that time it received the handsome decorative brick façade that it shares with the next-door building to the right. In 1942 the Gresham family sold its older sales space to the left at 114 NE Barnard Street to become a notion picture theater. The family continued retailing dry goods in this building into the 1980s, remaining a high-class store to the very end. Since that time the commercial building has housed several other retail merchants.

 

The plain-looking, cream-colored, artificial stone façade on the commercial building at 114 NE Barnard Street covers a structure that has an unexpectedly interesting history. About 1902 William Todd Gresham and his wife, Hattie, moved their retail dry goods store into a limestone building at this site, which previously had been a saloon. The business prospered, and Hattie as a widow expanded sales into the adjoining building to the right. In 1946 the Gresham family sold this building to Temple Summers to convert into a modest sized motion picture theater named, “The Palace.” It was here that Glen Rose residents viewed such first-run movies as “Gone with the Wind” in 1940 and “Wuthering Heights” in 1945. Singing cowboy actor Monte Hale even made a personal appearance at “The Palace” in 1946. In the meantime the Gresham family maintained its mercantile business next door to the right. Temple Summers continued to operate the motion picture theater into the 1970s, later selling it to other owners. In time retail merchants occupied the building and it received the present artificial stone façade.