Breustedt House

Duane's take

The way the official marker tells it, here's the story of the Breustedt House, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, if you want to talk about buildin' something to last, let's talk about the German settlers who came to Texas and decided that cedar timber and sun-baked adobe brick were all the argument they needed. What they built, they meant to keep.

The Breustedt House is what's known as fachwerk construction. That's a German colonial style where all the walls are framed with cedar timbers, then filled in solid with adobe brick, brick that was shaped and dried right there under the Texas sun. No shortcuts.

No compromises. Just timber and earth, fitted together with the kind of patience that makes a building last longer than anyone who built it. This particular house went up in 1858.

It was built for Johann Andreas and Caroline Breustedt, Caroline born a Dauer before she married into that name. The site sat just west of what is now the intersection of I.S. 35 and S.H. 46 east. Back then, of course, there were no interstate highway numbers to navigate by.

There was just land, and a family, and a house going up timber by timber. And that house did what good houses do. It held people.

Several generations of the Breustedt family grew up inside those cedar-framed, adobe-filled walls. Children, and their children, and life piling up the way it does inside a home that refuses to fall down. Now here's where the story takes a turn worth noting.

By 1965, the old homesite was not where the house needed to be anymore. So Mr. and Mrs. W.H.

Dillen stepped in, and they moved it. Picked up a house built in 1858 and carried it somewhere it could be restored and preserved. That is either an act of deep respect for history or the most determined kind of stubbornness, and in Texas, those two things are often the same.

The Breustedt House is still standing. Cedar timbers. Adobe brick.

Sun-baked and unyielding. Some things, if you build them right, just won't quit on you.

What the marker says

A fine example of German colonial "fachwerk" --all walls framed with cedar timbers, then filled solid with sun-baked adobe brick.Built 1858 for Johann Andreas and Caroline (Dauer) Breustedt, at site now just west of the intersection of I.S. 35 and S.H. 46 east. Several generations of the family grew up in the house.In 1965 it was moved here for restoration and preservation by Mr. and Mrs. W.H. Dillen.Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1972