Benavides-Herrera House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Down in Laredo, in the San Agustín historic district, there's a house that's been standing since about 1879. That's not nothing.

That's a house that has outlasted wars, floods, fashions, and just about every trend in Texas architecture you can name. The marker calls it a fine example of vernacular Mexican structures in the district, and once you hear what went into it, you'll understand why somebody thought it was worth remembering. A rancher by the name of Natividad Herrera built it.

But here's the thing worth noting before you picture some man staking a claim on raw land. He built it for his wife, Ester Benavides de Herrera. And the land it sits on?

She had inherited it from her mother. So right from the start, this is her ground, her house, her story, with Natividad doing the building. Ester was the daughter of Captain Refugio Benavides, and that name carried weight in this part of Texas.

The original structure was cut sandstone, which already tells you this wasn't a thrown-together affair. The craftsmen gave it a distinctive line of pilasters and unusual capitals, fine stonework, and wood panel double doors with transoms. You stop and look at a doorway like that and you know somebody cared about what they were leaving behind.

Now the house didn't stay exactly as it was built, because nothing in Texas ever does. By 1900, it had grown. Two brick additions had come along.

The first brought a corbelled parapet and a slate roof, which is the kind of detail that says somebody had opinions about elegance. The second addition was simpler, a gabled end building with a shingle roof. Three distinct moments in stone and brick and wood, all stacked onto that original 1879 footprint on land that Ester Benavides de Herrera received from her mother.

Some houses just hold their ground. This one held its history too.

What the marker says

A fine example of the vernacular Mexican structures in Laredo's San Agustín historic district, this house was built about 1879. Rancher Natividad Herrera built the house for his wife, Ester Benavides de Herrera (daughter of Captain Refugio Benavides) on land she had inherited from her mother. The original cut sandstone house featured a distinctive line of pilasters and unusual capitals, fine stonework and wood panel double doors with transoms. By 1900 the house had two brick additions, the first with a corbelled parapet and slate roof and the second a simple gabled end building with shingle roof. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-2000