103 Elm St (Shields Furniture Store Building) - Glen Rose Downtown Historic District - Glen Rose, TX - NRHP Historic Districts - Contributing Buildings on Waymarking.com

While the National Register's Registration Form lists this and other properties as being on "W Elm Street", it's actually just "Elm Street." It provides a fairly lengthy description:

The Shields Furniture Store Building is a three-bay One-Part Commercial Block constructed of ashlar limestone. The structure consists of a stone main building to which a modern shed-roof addition was been placed on the rear at some date between 1987 and 1992. The stone structure measures 26 feet wide in the front, 26 feet 5 inches wide in the rear, and 80 feet long. The sheet metal addition is 26 feet 5 inches across and 5 feet 10 inches deep. The stone portion of the building has a flat roof that slopes toward the rear and the somewhat lower shed roof of the addition. The facade of the building on the courthouse square consists of carefully quarried ashlar blocks of local limestone laid in regular courses that after the mid-1950s were painted a chocolate brown color. A slightly recessed double-door entry at the center is flanked by two large fixed plate glass windows. Above the door, the display windows, and the awning are transoms that admit natural light into the sales area. Across the front is a historic wooden and sheet metal awning supported on metal rods from the wall and is stabilized by four upright posts. A recent welded pipe restraint at the curb protects pedestrians from falling off the concrete front sidewalk. Portions of the rear stone wall are visible above the shed roof of the metal addition, as is part of the southeast-facing side wall, both of which have been coated with a cementacious slurry. The southwest side also shows a reglet that was cut into the Shields wall to receive the roof of a former building that abutted it.

William Shields and his wife, Elizabeth Drummond Taylor Shields, were born in Scotland and immigrated to the United States in 1872, arriving with several children in Somervell County in 1880. Soon thereafter William Shields opened a combined furniture, hardware, and undertaking establishment in Glen Rose. Turn-of-the-century photographs show the enterprise located in a wooden building at the site where later Shields family members at some date after the 1902 tornado erected the still-standing stone One-part Commercial Block. On the death of William Shields in 1904, his son, John Shields, assumed management of the family business. The family maintained the furniture store until its sale in 1931. This led to the store becoming R.T. Ratliff's Clover Farm Store, which sold groceries, meats, and poultry feeds at least into the mid-1950s. The building later housed an eating place managed by Linda Laramore under the name, Linda's Restaurant. At the time of writing this sketch, Texas Treasures & Jitters Coffee Bar was operating in the historic commercial building.

Name of Historic District (as listed on the NRHP): Glen Rose Downtown Historic District Link to nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com page with the Historic District: [Web Link] Address: 103 Elm St, Glen Rose, TX 76043 How did you determine the building to be a contributing structure?: Narrative found on the internet (Link provided below) Optional link to narrative or database: [Web Link] NRHP Historic District Waymark (Optional): Not listed

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