Breustedt Kitchen

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Breustedt Kitchen, out in Comal County. Now, some buildings just refuse to disappear, and this is the story of one of them. We're talking about a hand-hewn limestone structure, every stone shaped by someone's hands, floored with wide pipe boards nailed down to squared cedar sleepers lying flat on the ground.

The ceilings, adobe and grass plaster on split cedar lath. And the windows, these unique casement windows hung on hand-wrought hinges. Someone put real craft into every inch of this place.

There's even a stone-lined well. This was not a building thrown together in a hurry. This was a building meant to last, and brother, it did.

It was built in the 1860s as a detached kitchen, the kind families kept separate from the main house, for Johann Andreas Breustedt, born in 1827, and his wife Caroline, she was a Dauer before she married, and the two of them were raising nine sons and daughters under that Texas sky. At some point the main house was removed. Gone.

But the kitchen, that sturdy little limestone kitchen, it held on. Then in 1968, the Ray Whipple family stepped in and restored it. Someone looked at what remained and decided it was worth saving.

That's the thing about careful work, sometimes it outlasts everything built around it.

What the marker says

Hand-hewn limestone structure floored with wide pipe boards nailed to squared cedar sleepers lying flat on ground; ceilings of adobe and grass plaster on split cedar lath; hand-wrought hinges hang unique casement windows. Stone-lined well. Built in 1860s as detached kitchen for home of Johann Andreas Breustedt (b.1827) and wife Caroline (Dauer) and nine sons and daughters. After removal of house, kitchen was restored (In 1968) by the Ray Whipple family. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1973