Fayetteville was platted in 1850 on a grid pattern of twenty-eight blocks with a town square at the center and three state or county roads radiating from the square. The town today closely resembles the original plat as there has been only minimal growth. Fayetteville is a remarkable example of a quintessential Texas small town that has experienced virtually no change in over a century, yet remains an active community. The entire town was listed in the National Register in 2010 with three hundred and forty structures.
Fayetteville was incorporated on March 2, 1882. As specified in the 1850 plat, extra-wide streets of one hundred feet bordering the square were used for markets. Commercial buildings are concentrated around the square. Mostly wood frame and one story in height, many have wooden stepped false parapets obscuring a front-facing gable roof.
In 1887 the Taylor, Bastrop and Houston Railway (later part of the Missouri, Kansas and Texas) was built through town. A depot had been built in 1885 in expectation of the railroad. At the height of the railroad era there were six passenger trains going through Fayetteville daily. The rail line remains active although trains no longer stop in town.
A fire consumed many of the wooden buildings on the east side of the square in 1893. These were replaced with masonry structures such as Chovanec's General Store (1907), the Bank of Fayetteville (1907), Zapalac's Drug Store (1926), and Kubena's General Store (1946). Three c. 1890 wood-frame buildings on the block survived the fire: a drug store and doctor's office owned by Dr. C. H. Schramm and the Lohtik/Kubala building. Despite the fire the square is still dominated by these wood-framed buildings.
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