Mason’s courthouse square is surrounded by one- and two-story commercial buildings displaying a fine variety of architectural styles and details. A fire in 1900 destroyed many of the buildings on the north side of the courthouse square, accounting for the uniformity of the masonry buildings here today. Three buildings with complete pressed metal storefronts manufactured by Mesker Brothers Iron Works of St. Louis, Missouri, are the 1906 Hoerster Building (LL14), the former hardware store of 1904 at 106 Fort McKavitt Street, and the 1890 building at 100 N. Live Oak Street that is now the Underwood Antique Mall. Although manufactured building materials were widely available by mail order by the late nineteenth century, their presence in Mason is surprising because Mason had no railroad service. These weighty and bulky materials would have arrived from the nearest rail station about thirty miles away in Llano or Brady and would have been transported to Mason by wagon.
On the square’s north side at 226 Fort McKavitt, Hinckley’s Country Store was built c. 1897 for F. W. Henderson as the Bank of Mason, with an opulent residence on the second floor. A corbeled brick cornice is enlarged with a metal cornice and central pediment. In the middle of the block (100 Broad Street) is the red sandstone building Richard Grosse designed for bootmaker Oscar Seaquist in 1914. The second story was added later for a lodge meeting room. The entablature and cornice are metal painted to simulate stone. At the end of this block (100 Fort McKavitt) is a fine example of local red sandstone. The eastern half of the building was constructed first, in 1884, for a mercantile and hide-buying business. An early Coca-Cola bottling plant operated here, which later changed to Dr Pepper.
Moody Street on the west side of the square includes the Spanish-styled Odeon Theater (1928) at number 122. In 1957, it hosted the pre-premier of the Walt Disney movie Old Yeller, based on Mason native Fred Gipson’s novel. Other noteworthy buildings include the former Fort Mason Hotel (1928; 111 Westmoreland Street), a four-story brick building that was reduced to two stories when purchased by Mason Bank in 1966. Its Alamoesque parapet was restored in 2003.