Boettcher House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, they call this place the Boettcher House, and the story starts the way a lot of good Texas stories start, with a man, a forest, and an idea. Edward Boettcher, known to just about everybody as Mr.

Ed, came to Huntsville in 1928. He wasn't just passing through. He came to start new logging operations in the pine forests nearby, and he meant business.

He got his mill up and running, the Boettcher Mill, and that mill became the source of something more lasting than sawdust and timber contracts. The lumber that came out of that mill went straight into the fine interior woodwork of a house he built for himself and his family. Work began in 1933 and carried into 1934, and what rose up on that lot was something worth slowing down for.

The house is a Tudor bungalow, which is already a phrase that makes you stop and picture it. But Mr. Ed didn't stop at bungalow.

This place has a palladian entry, the kind of classical detail that speaks of someone with both means and taste. The gables are broken-pedimented, which is a fancy way of saying the roofline makes a statement. The whole thing is a notable example of its style, and the marker is not wrong to call it that.

Mr. Ed passed in 1967, but here's the part that lands quiet and true: the house stayed in the family. The man built something from his own mill, with his own lumber, for his own people, and his people kept it.

Some legacies are written in pine.

What the marker says

Edward ("Mr. Ed") Boettcher moved to Huntsville in 1928 to begin new logging operations in the nearby pine forests. His Boettcher Mill supplied the lumber for the fine interior woodwork in this house, which was built in 1933-34 for Boettcher and his family. A notable example of its style, the Tudor bungalow features classical elements in its palladian entry and the broken-pedimented gables. The house remained in the family after Boettcher's death in 1967.