Leppin’s Hardware • Pflugerville
Leppin’s Hardware • Pflugerville
Written by Pam Stephenson Thursday, 01 May 2008
For more than five decades, Leppin’s Hardware Store was an important establishment in the early Pflugerville community, providing much more than hardware to local families.
Mr. A. F. Leppin opened his first hardware store in 1908 on the north side of Main Street, according to the 1976 History of Pflugerville compiled by the Historical Committee of the Bi-Centennial Committee of Pflugerville. Leppin traveled to the United States from Germany by ship, arriving in Galveston. After a brief time in Brenham, he settled in Pflugerville.
In 1914, Leppin teamed with Edward Gertzenberger, a tinsmith. “Gertzenberger built a lot of tin cisterns, working out of Leppin’s store,” said Herbert Bohls, a lifelong Pflugerville resident who worked for Leppin after graduating from high school in the 1940s. “They re-located their store across the street, next to what is now the First State Bank Building.”
From 1920, Leppin ran the store in his own name, buying two brick buildings on the west end of the block in 1924 where he moved his store. Leppin operated his business in this location until 1953. He also had a warehouse on Pecan Street, where he put together farm implements. Leppin’s grandson, Oliver Leppin of Round Rock, recalled how impressed he was watching “the forger that heated the metal red hot” and how the metalsmith “beat out the shape of the tool or implement” from the molten metal.
In addition to hardware items, Leppin’s sold wagons, buggies, harnesses for mules, shotgun shells, fencing materials, including nails and staples, and even furniture and home appliances such as cook stoves and wood burning heaters. “He sold chopping hoes for cotton, baling wire for baling by hand in those days,” Bohls said. “And shovels, hammers and saws.”
Oliver added that his grandfather later bought another building on Main Street that had a freight elevator. He explained that Leppin sold automobiles there and used the elevator to lift Ford automobiles to the second floor showroom. “That building is still there on Main Street,” remembered Oliver.
Longtime resident Gladys Pfluger, during an oral history interview, recalled that Leppin’s Hardware was a pretty good store. “He had implements, simple implements, with all kinds of hardware, paint and he had furniture, appliances – as few appliances as we had back in those days,” she said. “He had caskets and stuff down in there, too.” The caskets indicate another hat that Mr. Leppin wore – that of the local undertaker. In the early years, Pflugerville residents didn’t use funeral homes. Bohls said that Leppin did the embalming on a big marble slab. He had a special room under the stairwell, where he displayed caskets from which the families could choose. “After being embalmed, families would bring the body back to the house and put it in the living room,” Pfluger said. “The first part of the funeral would start in the house. There, the family and friends would visit and pay their respects to the family. A service was then held at the church and again at the cemetery.”
According to Oliver Leppin, the store closed in 1953 when his grandfather passed away unexpectedly. He said the family rented out the buildings to various companies for several years, before liquidating everything. When the building that housed the main store was destroyed in the 1971 fire that demolished many stores on Main Street, Oliver was one of the volunteer firefighters from Round Rock called to fight the fire. “That fire spread so fast through the metal ceilings that got red hot,” said Oliver as he sadly recalled the event that destroyed the building that served three generations of the Leppin family.
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