The tallest commercial building in downtown Glen Rose, the Talley building doesn’t look quite the way it did originally. The structure with stone sides and a brick front first shows up in photographs made after a 1905 fire that burned down all of the wooden buildings on the northeast side of the square. The structure initially served two quite different purposes. While the downstairs provided commercial rental space for businesses, the upstairs formed the meeting space for the Glen Rose Masonic Lodge, including a large high-ceilinged ceremonial assembly room. Sometime after World War II a fire damaged the upper level. Subsequently the roof and walls were lowered, but stonemasons constructed buttresses reaching up from the lowered side walls to support the impressive high but now false front. The Talley Building had among the widest variety of occupants to be found in the town, among them the Ford automobile dealership, motion picture theaters, offices of an electric utility company, a hardware store, hairdressers, accountants, a newspaper, and even the Somervell County Museum during its early years.