DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the marker tells it, and I'm taking it from the top. There's a house sitting in Hays County that carries more history than its walls probably bargained for when they went up. Let me walk you through it.
The year was 1896. A German architect by the name of Charles S. Sinz drew up the plans, and the Beverly Hutchison family had it built — their name, right there in the title deed and in the very name the house carries to this day.
Over the years the place passed through several sets of hands. L. Robertson owned it for a spell, then E.
O. Bethke, then R. E.
Miller, then M. Falls. A house with that kind of turnover has seen some living, no question.
But none of that — not the architect, not the original family, not a single one of those subsequent owners — is what earned this house its place in the history books. No, for that you have to roll the calendar forward to the late nineteen twenties. Because sometime in there, a young man rented a room in this very house while he was attending Southwest Texas State Teacher's College — the place that later became Southwest Texas State College.
He was a student, just a young man from the Texas Hill Country, and his name was Lyndon Baines Johnson. Now, when you're standin' outside lookin' at a house, you don't always know what it's holdin'. But this one was holdin' the future thirty-sixth president of the United States — right there inside those walls Charles S.
Sinz designed back in 1896. History has a way of checkin' in where it pleases.
What the marker says
Designed by German architect Charles S. Sinz; built 1896 for the Beverly Hutchison family; later owned by L. Robertson, E. O. Bethke, R. e. Miller and M. Falls, this house in the late 1920s earned its place in history as residence of a student from the Texas Hill County. The young man, Lyndon Baines Johnson, destined to be the thirty-sixth president of the United States, lived in this home during part of his time at Southwest texas State Teacher's College (now Southwest Texas State College). Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1968