Palace Barbershop
Trail
Type
Date
Address
Names
H&R Block
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The original Palace Barbershop dates back at least to 1909, since it can be seen in the 1909 photo on page 6. The brick building also housed an apprenticeship program for barbers and the rear part of the barbershop housed the first beauty shop in Blanco. W. L. Byars also owned a tailor shop located in the back of the barbershop.
G. W. (Wampus) Garrett owned the barbershop in the 1920s. Later a Mr. Patton traded the building to Josiah Wagner for a chicken farm. After the building burned in 1929, it was rebuilt using the standing rock walls and Wagner hired Bige Grisham to operate the barbershop. Eventually Grisham and Adolph Wolf bought the building from Wagner. They ran the Palace Barbershop for many years until Grisham finally moved the business to 4th Street across from the bowling alley.
For over fifty years it was a barbershop with the only public hot baths in town. As a boy, life-long Blanco resident Roy Byars remembers really enjoying shining shoes there because he had ready access to the baths, which definitely beat a #3 wash tub!
Diana Blackburn bought the building from Richard Hauser in 1986 for her tax service. Since Uptown Blanco purchased the buildings on that side of the square, this building has been vacant.
The building, one of several constructed in response to the expansion of agriculture in the late 1920s, retains a high degree of integrity.