Commerce St.

Commerce St.. . Because of the importance of El Camino Real (Main Street) as an east-west corridor in early Texas, most of the city's leading commercial establishments developed along the sides of this important road. The property in this block originally belonged to the families who owned the Old Stone Fort, the Y'Barbos and then Roberts. As individuals bought property along Main Street for the businesses, they also acquired the barns, wagon yards, wells, storehouses, and corn cribs behind these lots along what is now Commerce Street. The area has severed as an important Nacogdoches service artery since the days of the Republic of Texas. No name, however, appears on maps before 1906., One of the town's main livery stables and wagon yards developed behind the Mitchelle Hotel on the east end of this block in the mid-19th century. Behind the drugstores, groceries, and general merchandise storefronts in the west end of the block, an important series of warehouses came into being to service the main street stores., In 1888, when the Mayer and Schmidt Company purchased the building on the corner of Main and Fredonia, their deed gave the first formal recognition of the importance of the alleyway to all the businesses. The deed designated 35 feet of the distance between their Main Street store and their storehouse "for public purposes only". This deed and many others, however, referred to the alley as "Progress Street". The 1906 Sanborn city map sued the name "Commerce Street" for the first time and established width at 45 feet., Architect D. Rulfs designed most of the buildings along Commerce Street in the period between 1888 and 1910. For instance, in 1888 he built the first Mayer and Schmidt Building at the west end of the block between Commerce and Main along Fredonia Street; in 1889 he designed and built the Opera House at the east end of the block. Rulfs also built the warehouse along the north side of Commerce Street. In 1898 he enlarged and added a second story to the Cotton Exchange Building. While the first of 1901 destroyed the center of the block, the first of 1908 completely destroyed the west end. Ruffs replaced the ruins with the Mayer and Schmidt building which still stands on the corner at Fredonia., On the map of 1906, wells are still shown in the edge of the street, and the buildings facing Main did not extend to a uniform depth along Commerce. In later decades, many of the facades of these commercial buildings along the street received "updates". There are however, enough of the turn-of-the-century elements to make Commerce Street the most interesting service artery in downtown Nacogdoches: intricate brickwork, the arched windows, metal shutters and awnings, and interesting interiors make Commerce Street one of the nicest streets in downtown Nacogdoches.