Fire destroyed the Carroll-Ames Hardware building on the west side of the square in Bryan.
Construction of the 66-feet-wide, 16,500-square-feet, three-story building began in July 1911. In March 1912, Earl C. Carroll and Bert W. Ames opened the Carroll-Ames Hardware in one of the building’s first-floor storefronts. The Bryan Masonic Lodge dedicated its new facilities on the structure’s third floor on June 14, 1912.
In 1935, the Masons purchased the two-story brick building at 117 North Lynn Street, formerly occupied by the Knights of Pythias Lodge, remodeled the structure, and dedicated it as a Masonic Temple on December 6, 1935.
On December 14, 1948, fire destroyed the Carroll-Ames Hardware building. The Bryan Press newspaper reported, “As nearly as firemen could determine, the source seems to have been the partition between the hardware cellar and the basement cardroom operated by Charles Henry. The cause of origin is unknown. No one was in either the hardware or the cardroom when the fire first started, the players in the cardroom having left earlier than usual Monday night because a power failure at the city light plant caused lights to go out.”
The following day, the north wall and roof of the Jaffe Town Shoppe building south of the hardware collapsed, and Bryan Fire Chief Walter McFadden condemned the Earl Andres Insurance Agency building north of the hardware.
Following the 1948 fire, the Carroll-Ames Hardware operated at a number of downtown sites before locating in the former Temple Theater northeast of the intersection of High and Beech streets in 1955.
These colorized circa 1948 vintage images of the Carroll-Ames Hardware fire are from the Williams County Public Library Huffman Photographic Archives.
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