Historic Downtown Plano

Twice over, Plano was made by what came down the line. The Houston & Texas Central railroad reached the little farm town in 1872 and turned a crossroads into a cotton-shipping hub almost overnight; the electric Interurban followed in 1908 and tied Plano into a high-speed network that ran from Denison to Waco. But the town you walk today owes its look to a disaster in between. In October 1895 a fire tore through the wood-frame business district and burned dozens of stores to the ground. Plano rebuilt in brick — corbelled cornices, transom windows, iron columns from the Sherman foundry — and those handsome two-story blocks along 15th Street (once called Mechanic Street) and K Avenue are what survive. This loop walks the old downtown: the depots and the bank, the dry-goods stores rebuilt after the fire, the lodge halls, the schoolhouse, and the grand homes the railroad money built. Look up above the storefront awnings — the dates and the brickwork tell the story.