Kay Williams Goodman was walking out of Jupiter House with her two daughters Friday morning when the 72-year-old noticed workers chiseling away at a building embedded in her childhood memory.

“I was just by here last week and it was the same old, same old, and look, they’re tearing down the facade,” Goodman said she told her daughters. “I hope they’re doing something really neat with it.”

DRC/Barron Ludlum

Oscar Martinez and John Capan remove the stucco facade of the Gene Gamble Insurance building as part of renovation work Thursday on the Square.

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Before it was the old Gene Gamble Insurance building, 102 N. Locust St. was The Williams Store — her family’s clothing store that served the Denton community for nearly a century and where she spent much of her childhood.

And now workers have started tearing down the stucco to get to the original bricks of the 1900s structure.

Owner Chi Dao received a $25,000 city grant last month to help fund the facade work on the 7,000-square-foot building, which has been empty nearly three years.

The design was bounced off the city several times before approval and a grant were given, said Julie Glover, staff liaison with Denton’s Downtown Task Force. 

“There’s nothing structurally wrong with the building,” she said. “Those buildings were built to last for a very long time. It will be a vast improvement over what it has been, and it will contribute to the Square.”

The original tin ceiling tiles will be preserved and used in the commercial portion of the building, outside bricks will be saved and transom windows — like the ones originally in the building — will be placed above a canopy, she said.

Within about four months, the site will house four one-bedroom apartments and two commercial areas — one off Locust Street and the other off Austin Street, Dao said.

Dao, a Lakewood Village resident, said he purchased the property about two years ago, thinking Denton would be a nice place to retire.

“It’s a nice town,” he said. “It’s not too crowded like Dallas. It’s open, and soon there will be a rail near the Square. It’s a good town with good schools.”

Dao became familiar with Denton when his daughter attended Texas Woman’s University two years ago.

There have been no decisions on how the commercial space will be used, but Dao has already reserved one of the apartments for himself because, he said, “somehow, I just like Denton.”

Location key

Now gutted, the building resembles a gaping cavern that is 120 feet long between the two streets. The original tin ceiling tiles still cling to the ceiling, awaiting the hands of workers to relocate them.

DRC/Candace Carlisle

Workers at the old Gene Gamble Insurance building found several historic items underneath the floorboards, including receipts from The Williams Store dated in the 1920s and catalogs from the early 1900s.

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When the Locust Street building was first constructed in the 1900s, The Williams Store moved in.

The Williams family opened their first department store location on the Square in 1857, the same year Denton was founded.

The Square was the central gathering place in the county for people to buy and trade, Goodman said.

County residents would spend the day on horseback and come to the Square once a week, mostly on Mondays, to buy and trade goods, she said, which made that location the perfect spot to set up shop.

“On that day, everything happened at the county seat — the most central point in the county — it was important to be where people are trading,” Goodman said.

Back then, store owners weren’t worried about just making a buck; it was a place for people to congregate around her grandfather’s large desk as a community, she said.

“He held court back there, especially for horsemen. … They would sit in a circle and talk,” Goodman said.

As times have changed, there are no longer “handshake merchants” with businesses congregating around the Square, which used to be the shopping center of town, she said.

“I’ve always hated it, that the Square is not the mercantile center of town now,” Goodman said. “When people go shopping, they don’t think of going to the Square; it takes the town flavor out of the Square.”

Over the years, ownership of the building has changed hands from a furniture store to a legal office to an insurance company. And now it has a new future.

On with the old

As workers peeled off the stucco and gutted the interior of the old Gamble building, they’ve found treasures dating back to the early 1900s under floorboards, said Lee Ramsey, principal at Links Construction, the contractor for the project.

Along with keeping the original elements of the building, contractors will raise the roof on the Austin Street side, which will help make that side as attractive as the Locust Street side, Ramsey said.

“The old feel of downtown Denton is important to us,” Ramsey said. “I’ve been around the Square all my life, and we want to keep what the Square should be.”

Although it’s enjoyable to work on a building originally built in the 1900s, bringing it up to code is costly and hard to do, Ramsey said.

The construction and refurbishing costs are estimated at $700,000, he said.

The building was last appraised at $375,000, according to data from Denton County’s Appraisal District. 

As the building has stood empty in recent years, it’s been difficult for Goodman to pass by and not feel like the structure was deserted, she said.

When Goodman thinks of the property being refurbished, she said, she remembers exactly how the building was laid out and how it smelled decades ago.

And now she wonders what the renovation will bring to the Square.

“I think it’s great they’re revitalizing it, in a sense,” she said.

CANDACE CARLISLE can be reached at 940-566-6889. Her e-mail address is ccarlisle@dentonrc.com.

TIMELINE OF 102 N. LOCUST ST.

1900s — The Williams Store moves into the newly constructed Locust Street building

1956 — The Williams Store sells the building and business

1957 — Ball Furniture sets up shop in the building

1968 — The building houses a loan business

1985 — A legal office moves in

1986 — Gene Gamble Insurance Agency moves in

2006 — The insurance company moves out; building left vacant for nearly three years

Source: Courthouse-Museum-on-the-Square and the city of Denton