In a city like Spur—which launched in 1909 with considerable advantages and the highest of aspirations, but by the middle of the twentieth century still had not grown much beyond its one main commercial thoroughfare and didn’t find much need to reference street addresses—it’s easy to lose track of which enterprises or structures occupied a given spot in any given decade of its history.
Neither newspaper articles nor history books point definitively to specific locations. More often, journalists (and advertisers themselves!) noted only that a particular business existed next door to something else. And once the landmark reference itself changed, context was lost.
So it’s understandable that even current owners and occupants aren’t sure what once stood on their city lots.
As for the three-story building north of the current-day Spur Hardware (which is cited variously over the years as the Chevrolet House or the Magnolia Station, current owner and rehabber Jeromy Rutledge is right that a café once occupied its ground floor. It doesn’t happen to be the fondly remembered Bell’s Café, according to Spurite Eric Swenson and every caller at the Texas Spur office for the past two weeks.
What was in the building editor Oran McClure in 1928 said put Spur in the “skyscraping class of cities?”
Even a sampling shows that the various floors housed a grocery store (Piggly Wiggly), a photography studio (Adams), several professionals such as doctors, lawyers and optometrists; the soil conservation service, the American Business College, the American Legion hall, the city engineer, a tailor shop, and more.
Further, the original investor, mortuary operator and furniture merchant W. S. Campbell, appears to have moved his enterprises around a few times after demolishing circa-1910 wooden structures on his lots in the 300 block of Burlington Avenue to make way for substantial, modern “bricks.”
Northward on the east side of the main street were several other buildings also erected in 1928.
“I think I have it right,” recalled Swenson, “that Dorothy’s Beauty Shoppe (later Smuggler’s Cove) was the next building north of [the three-story building]. Then came Campbell’s Funeral Home, Brashear Supply Company run by Gene Brashear, and then Bells [Café].”
The café that moved into the Campbell Building in September 1932 was Foster’s, according to the Texas Spur.
But perhaps the strangest activity of all to have occupied the Campbell Building took place in December 1945, when Spur households eager to be done with wartime scarcities jockeyed for the chance to catch one of 27 live Christmas turkeys loosed from the structure’s third floor windows. (No, we’re not making this up. And despite what the headline says, it wasn’t the first time this stunt had been attempted in town— see our story “Spur’s thirtiesera poultry promo loosed a rafter from the rafters,” Noveber 28, 2019.)
Ann Walker, taking part in lively conversation last week at the Spur Senior Citizens about the actual site of Bell’s Café, recalls being one of those fortunate to grab a gobbler back in the day.
The current editors sincerely wish Spur Hardware every success with western footwear, foodstuffs, firearms or whatever inventory the Campbell Building will soon offer when it’s again occupied. We have high hopes for the new café across the street too. But please, Jeromy, no fowl still on the wing.
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