It has anchored downtown Burton since 1876. Built as a general store, it was the town's cotton marketing center, held Burton's first telephone and, for a time, its first post office. In 1903 German immigrants William Dallmeyer and Joe Steiner opened a mercantile here that ran for more than fifty years. When the stores closed in the late 1960s the buildings sat empty, and demolition had begun before new owners stepped in and restored them.