What lies beneath

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DOWNTOWN BUSINESS REVEALS LAYERS OF COTULLA HISTORY…

FORMER PHARMACY, WESTERN WEAR STORE HAS STORIES TO TELL

 

Flaking paint, crumbling plaster and stucco, shards of brittle linoleum, dusty windowpanes and countless unhinged doors may be all that the eye can see in the gloomy depths of a long-vacated store in downtown Cotulla, but there is new life coming with a vision for rehabilitation on the horizon.

Known around the world for more than half a century as one of Texas’ premier businesses at which to find quality western wear, accessories, jewelry and gifts, the building spent a large span of its life as a tourist destination, a go-to for local ranchers and a must-stop for South Texas hunters.

Established in 1946, then owned for many of its subsequent years by local businessman Stewart Martin, Ben’s Western Wear occupied a tall downtown building on Front Street in the heart of the community’s historic district. Staff spent much of their time receiving visitors by the busload; ambassadors of the San Antonio Stock Show & Rodeo made an annual stop at Ben’s; and the dawn of the internet age meant goods were shipped worldwide from the store.

Aside from its never-ending supply of shirts, jeans, belts, buckles and hats, both as formal wear and for the working men and women of the Brush Country, Ben’s featured a special attraction to its visitors in the form of a hat museum founded by Stewart Martin and his wife Jill. Whenever a rancher, celebrity, politician or local would come in to buy a new hat, the Martins would offer to take the old one and hang it on the wall. By the end of the 1990s, the museum collection ranged up the shop walls ran the eclectic gamut from country music recording artist George Strait to onetime presidential candidate Lamar Alexander, with heaps of locally recognized names between.

Ben’s Western Wear was originally founded by local rancher Ben Ludeman, who reportedly saw the need for a clothing store in Cotulla to supply locals’ needs. His wife Annette was known in later years as an outspoken historian, author, and expert on the stories of all La Salle County’s ranching families and businesses. It is something of an irony that the Ludemans’ store would one day be the focus of historians’ attention.    

There is much more to the story of the building known as Ben’s. The name itself is now the property of Jill Martin and may never again adorn the thickly plastered walls, but there were other names that came before, and their history is still apparent in the bones of the two-story building.

For a number of years after her husband’s death in 2006, Jill Martin continued running the business but maintained a view that she would eventually bid Cotulla a fond farewell. The business closed its doors five years ago and the building was shuttered.

A virtual time capsule had been mothballed in the very center of town.

Today, windows have been revealed, doors creaked open, rooms examined for the first time in generations, floors stripped, and a small crew of carpenters and builders has begun the process of bringing life and business back to the prominent building.

The property includes the former store, an empty space to the south that bears only a false storefront facade, and a one-story annex to the north, a 1920s addition that was part of a downtown renewal after fire ravaged half a block of Front Street buildings.

The entire site is now owned by Leighton Storey, retired local teacher and daughter of a longstanding ranch family of La Salle County.

At first glance upon opening the doors of the silent building, Storey and friends found only the detritus of the recent past. Some clothes racks, carpeting, a few signs, the various bits and pieces that are left behind when a shop is vacated.

Underneath the carpet, the linoleum and the paint, and in a ghostly and long-abandoned upstairs, however, were the floors and rooms that had once served as the Gaddis Pharmacy, a doctor’s office and consulting rooms.

There had been a soda fountain counter along a downstairs wall. Dark circles still stain the tiny mosaics of penny tile where the pedestals of diner counter barstools had once been anchored.

The penny tile itself, stretching from elaborate ‘Gaddis Pharmacy’ porch inlay to the far reaches of the vast interior space, dates to an update and facelift from approximately 1921. The building itself, however, predates the tile by several years and had already become a thriving business that served virtually every La Salle County resident – young and old alike – for a quarter century.

Upstairs in a darkened room that appears to have been a doctor’s private office, large hand-painted boards list the prices in mere pennies and dimes of the sandwiches that were sold at the soda counter.

Inexplicably perhaps, a rolled-up map of Africa lies askew on an unused and still wrapped oak and glass display case. Most of the countries on the map don’t exist anymore. Broad swaths of the continent are colored pink for possessions of the British Empire, bright yellow for the Belgian Congo, and cream for the French colonies throughout the west.

The map cannot be newer than the mid-1950s. Insects have eaten Johannesburg right off the bottom. 

The sound of electric saws and drills can be heard from downstairs, piercing the eerie stillness of the dusty second floor. Contractor Greg Fletcher is busy cutting new window frames and door posts for the downstairs conversion.

“We keep finding odd things that don’t make sense,” Fletcher’s daughter Gaby says on a tour of the darkened rooms. “We don’t know why there’s a map of Africa right here in the middle of everything, or who these people are, who have their phone numbers written on the walls by the doors.”

A tiny room no larger than a broom closet, far at the back of the second floor, contains a single commode that hasn’t been used since before the Second World War. A roll of discolored toilet paper still hangs beside it.

“One thing that most people just don’t remember or even think about is that the Ben’s store sign and all the stucco outside is covering up a lot of windows,” Gaby says. “Each of these rooms had one or two windows. We moved a few panels and found the original windows still completely intact, buried in the walls, right behind the facade. It’s all still there.”

The smaller annex, a onetime flower shop, which latterly contained the Ben’s boot displays and part of the hat museum, was opened to reveal a full set of shop windows, transom lights, and a functional oak door now exposed for the first time in living memory.

The main building facade has been stripped of its late-20^th century windows and doors to be furnished with period-correct wooden frames and glass; a forgotten second entry is also now revealed.

“That second door led to a staircase that went straight up to the doctor’s office,” Greg Fletcher says. “The stairs are gone, but we are looking to put them back. You can still see where they went up the wall.”

Upstairs, a brown shadow at ankle height marks the place where the doctor’s patients ran their hands up a stair bannister rail. Beside a mismatched set of floor planks and a header beam, the stain is all that remains of the principal access from sidewalk level to the clinic.

“How many layers of floor can you count here?” Gaby asks, sweeping her flashlight beam over a consulting room floor. “Look at these colors and decorations, underneath all these others. You don’t see this kind of elaborate flower print on floors anymore.”

The former Gaddis Pharmacy, the onetime flower shop next door, and the empty space to the south will soon hum with life again. Storey says she plans to open her Black Brush Trading antique shop in the smaller storefront, lease out the main building – and she’s hoping it will be a western wear store – and is looking to attract food trucks, outdoor vendors or a coffee shop to the open-air space.

The Cotulla Main Street Program works to encourage downtown property owners to preserve and restore the historical features of the Front Street businesses, repurpose the interiors and return the district to a position of economic vitality for the greater benefit of the community as well as a tourist attraction. With restoration of the former pharmacy, another section of the historic downtown district is being returned to its former splendor, a reminder of the commerce that played a vital role in the development of Cotulla as the business center for La Salle County and the Brush Country as a whole.

And the penny tile?

“Yeah, we’re keeping that,” Fletcher says. “Think of all the people who stepped over this tile in their lifetimes… These little details are so important to our town story.”