Business and work19 cards: 7 firsts, 3 claimed firsts and 9 beginnings
Banks, stores, a grocery and a foundry, an oil well, a skyscraper and a shopping center.
- The first brick buildings in Smith CountyFive stores on the square, built by Alfred W. Ferguson.
- Murphey the Jeweler opens at Ferguson and BroadwayA family business, one of the oldest stores in East Texas, says its marker.
- Bonner and Williams, Tyler’s first bankFounded by Col. Thomas R. Bonner, later speaker of the Texas House.
- Tyler’s first ice factory, as the city’s survey tells itBefore it, ice came from Missouri and only the wealthy could afford it.
- Moore Grocery, Tyler’s first wholesale groceryFrom a market on East Ferguson to a three-story brick warehouse.
- Savas Xydias, one of Tyler’s first Middle Eastern residentsHe arrived in 1889 and opened a bakery in 1890.
- Hispanic families appear in the city directoryDomingo Garcia, listed as Mexican, ran a restaurant at Broadway and Erwin.
- The Tyler Chamber of Commerce is createdRudolph Bergfeld a director; Jacob Lipstate among its organizers.
- W. C. Stallings, the nation’s first agent for a single countyOn November 12, 1906, at a meeting in an opera house near the Smith County Courthouse attended by Dr. Seaman A. Knapp of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, W. C. Stallings of the Dixie community became the first county agent in Texas and the first in the nation to serve only one county.
- Citizens National Bank builds Tyler’s first “skyscraper”In 1924 Citizens National Bank built Tyler’s first “skyscraper,” an eight-story building.
- Wood T. Brookshire opens a grocery on the squareA 2,500-square-foot store on the courthouse square.
- The first producing oil well in Smith CountyBrought in near Arp by Guy Vernon Lewis.
- People’s Bank raises a 15-story towerArt Deco, at North College and West Erwin.
- Tyler Pipe, an iron foundry, dates to 1935Cast iron soil pipe and fittings, made in Tyler.
- Sam Greenberg’s smokehouse, the start of Greenberg TurkeysBuilt to prepare kosher geese for his family.
- The Tyler Foundation and a rose research foundation startHelp for new businesses, and research for rose growers.
- Bergfeld Center, called Tyler’s first suburban shopping centerThe city’s National Register documentation calls the late-1940s Bergfeld Square “Tyler’s first suburban shopping center” in one passage, and Bergfeld Center, opened in 1949 on South Broadway, “one of Tyler’s first suburban shopping centers” in another.
- Downtown trade declines for the first timeThe downtown National Register nomination says suburban growth and shopping malls in the 1960s and 1970s marked the first time in Tyler’s history that downtown commerce and development declined.
- Stanley’s neon sign, called the first in Tyler to get a markerThe North Texas SBDC says it was the first in Tyler.