First State Bank
Security Building
331 W. Main St.
Denison, Texas
POSTCARD

“Denison, the Texas Gateway: A Busy, Progressive City with Golden Opportunities” [ca. 1908], lists:

 The First State Bank—Security Office Building [331 W. Main St.]

This institution, established in September 1907, has already achieved a most substantial report, and today stands out prominently among the sound financial institutions of the city. The officers of the bank are Messrs. A. S. Burrows, Prest.; T. A. Murphy, Vice-Prest.; Jno. R. Haven, Cashier, and the gentlemen, together with the following, compose the list of Directors: W. C. Rutledge, R. T. Arthur, G. W. Carver, E. Regensburger [sic] and A. D. Jackson, all of whom are recognized as able business men and good financiers. The bank is equipped with the most modern facilities to conduct a general banking business, receiving deposits, making loans, issuing drafts, attending to collections, etc. The Savings Department, which is a special feature of the institution, pays interest on deposits. The bank is incorporated, is under the supervision of the State Bank Commissioner, and has a capital of $60,000.00. The deposits are constantly on the increase. The bank solicits the accounts of merchants, manufacturers, and individuals, courtesy and accommodation being extended to patrons consistent with sound banking methods. The officers and directors of this institution are well known and take a deep interest in movements for the public good of the community.

Denison Daily Herald
Friday, April 24, 1908

At 331 West Main was the big Security Building. The front part of the main entrance was the First State Bank. It was first built five stories high and was the tallest building in Texas. The entrance to the main building and elevator was on the side and toward the back. It was an office building of all sorts. The fifth floor was taken off before I was born, about 1900. They thought it might fall, as it was only fifty feet wide. It was cracked in time, and people thought it might fall down at any time and should be condemned. It was torn down in the fifties—1958 to be exact—and they could hardly knock it down with a crane and large iron ball.

331 West Main St.
"Bank of Brooks, Bass & Johnston,. Financial Responsibility, Quarter of a Million Dollars.  Real Estatea Office of H. Alexander, Side Entrance."
In Robinson, Frank M., comp.  Industrial Denison.  [N.p.] : Means-Moore Co., [ca. 1901].  Page 92.

Source:
Anderson, Thomas B. “Tom B. Anderson (1904–1983) Remembers: Biography of the Anderson Family and How Well I know Denison.” Unpublished memoir, August 1975. On file, Denison Public Library.

From Maguire, Katy’s Baby:

“For several years the location of the post office changed almost as often as did the postmasters. From Skiddy Street it moved to the corner of Main and Burnett, the later site of the now demolished Security Building” (page 17).

The five-story Leeper Building, later called the Security Building, was Texas’s first skyscraper. It was the tallest building in Denison’s history, and people drove from as far away as Dallas to see it. The top floor was removed before 1905 for being “dangerously too high.”

Tom Hall and Paul Leeper opened a hardware firm, the Hall-Leeper Hardware Company, in the Leeper Building in 1881. At the turn of the century, when Sam Star and Charles Waterman vacated the Original Star Building at 125 West Main Street, Hall-Leeper moved into it.

Advertisement for Leeper Hardware
331 West Main Street
Denison City Directory, 1896 - 1897

In 1910, according to Katy’s Baby, “while Denison leaders were trying to decide where the put the city hospital, the Katy had opened a small clinic on the fourth floor of the Security Building to serve its own employees. The city’s hope was that its new hospital, when completed, could be leased to the Katy to operate. The railroad rejected that idea, but did agree to use the new City Hospital for emergency surgery.”

A two-story brick building was erected on this site about 1967. It housed Lilley’s Men Store. The Whitewright National Bank later constructed a one-story structure on the site.

The most popular and most long-lived taxi company in Denison was the Four Three (43). It was established in 1934 in the Security Building by Stinson Hatfield, David Nesbitt, and J. C. Salyer. When the Security Building was razed in 1954, the company moved into the old Yellow Cab stand at 114 South Rusk Avenue. That site became Ernie’s Eat Shop. 

331 W. Main
Architect :  Pierre Lelardoux
Leeper (Security) Building
Source : Art Work of Grayson County (1895)

Tallest building is in Texas in Denison, in 1891
Donna Hunt
Herald Democrat
8 July 2013

As we wait for the building that has housed the Katy Antique Station for a number of years to be dismantled, and anticipate having two vacant lots in Downtown Denison, an item in the "Look through the past" column on Friday reminded me of another vacant lot left when a historic building was torn down.

But thank goodness another building was placed there and it has been "business as usual" for many years.  Hopefully before long the entire 700 block West Main that was home to Denison High School, then McDaniel Junior High from 1914 until 1965 and the building lot down by the station that is waiting to be razed will also have a new lease on life.  

Once upon a time, as many good stories begin, the tallest building in Texas was in downtown Denison.  You'll have to remember that this wasn't in recent days, but in 1891.  The building was so tall that the top floor was declared unsafe and was removed a few years after it was built.

First known as the Leeper Building, then later as the Security Building, it had a towering five stories at 331 West Main, present location of Independent Bank in the "new" building that sprang up after the demolition of the 1891 building.

The "look through the past" column compiled by JoAnn Ecker Friday listed in Dec. 7, 1952 the 60 years ago section, included an item about the Denison City Council ordering the condemnation and razing of the 63 year old Security Building that was called the "first skyscraper in Texas".

The building was owned at that time by K. Wolens Inc., of Corsicana that had a department store about half a block east.  The building had been designed by a French architect named LeLardo and was built by John B. Leeper & and J.T. Baldrick.

FIRST TEXAS SKYSCRAPER WILL STAND
Denison, December 20 - Texas' first "skyscraper" - the 4-story Security Building - will be allowed to stand but it has to give up its fancy trimmings.
They'll be removed soon after January 1, Jay Silverberg, head of Wolens Realty Co., Corsicana, owners of the 61-year-old building, told the City Council.,
The council, which had condemned the building, agreed yesterday to let it stand if its owners would "make it safe as far as fire and human life are concerned."
Silberberg said both the foundation and the main part of the building have been found structurally sound by all who have checked it.
The primary danger comes from the cornices, fancy appendages, and rotted window frames that are incapable of holding the heavy plate glass windows.  Silverberg was told by City Atty.  Hal Rawlins.
The Security Building was the first skyscraper constructed in Texas having been completed in 1891.  At one time it was a 5-story building with high-hipped roofs and a tremendous coffee pot extended on the front, a trademark of the firm that occupied it.

When they began excavating for the foundation, they ran into stubborn rock that financially wrecked the original group of backers.  The hole that had been dug filled with water when it rained, giving Main Street a real swimming pool for a while.

As the building finally began to go up, those who watched the construction worried about the height of the five story building.  True to their warnings, the fifth floor, with its high pitched roof and giant replica of a coffee pot on top, was found to be a safety hazard and was removed a few years after it was built.

In the beginning a wholesale hardware enterprise occupied the building.  It housed a bank and for many years offices of medical doctors, dentists and lawyers along with insurance offices and a small elevator that took patients and customers to the designated floor.  Overlooking the orantely carved entrance was an even more ornately carved head that became known as "Stoneface."  It was said that the unusual ornament was chisled in place by a French sculptor who would hammer a while, then visit one of nearby saloons for his "coffee break".

In the front part of the building was a the Bluebonnet Cafe that was replaced by the Ration Board that opened to issue ration stamps during World War II.  

In 1940 a young Carrie Cole was hired to operate the elevator.  Most weeks she worked seven days from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. and loved her job of meeting just about everyone in town at one time or another.  She remembers every one of them and which floor most of them officed.

The day the Wolens Realty Co., owner of K. Wolens Department Store, bought the building her pay was raised to $1 an hour and she was given a week's vacation and her work days were cut to six a week.  One doctor got upset because he said he had patients coming down on Sunday.  The Wolens people told him he could operate the elevator himself on those days.

There are some questions about what went on in the basement of the Security Building.  As a young Camp Fire girl, I remember having the Dad and Daughter box supper and some other activities down there.  That would have been in the mid 1940s.

Carrie has different remembrances.  She said whiskey was sold illegally by bootleggers out of the basement.  Next door was a pool hall and Carrie said she never knew what transpired over there, but one day Policeman Griffin came by and questioned her about the basement and the pool hall.  She told him she didn't know anything about it.  Whether he was serious or not, he threatened to put her in jail if she didn't tell him what she knew.

Carrie told him, "I don't run this elevator sideways, I go up and down," and that broke Officer Griffin up.