Comfort Post Office

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Comfort Post Office in Kendall County. Now settle in, because this is a story that starts with wandering and ends with permanence. From 1856, the town of Comfort had itself a postal station.

Mail was coming in, mail was going out, but for decades, nobody gave that post office a home of its own. It just drifted, the way a tumbleweed drifts, from one mercantile store to the next. Whatever shop had the space, the post office moved right in.

That went on for more than half a century. More than fifty years of borrowed counters and borrowed shelves. Now, if you know anything about Texas towns, you know that kind of arrangement can last longer than anyone intends.

But in 1910, things changed. Hermann Ingenhuett was serving as postmaster that year, and on his watch, something permanent finally got built. The man they brought in to design it was Alfred Giles, a noted San Antonio architect, and Giles did not phone it in.

He gave Comfort a renaissance revival style structure, and he did what he apparently did best: he blended red brick and limestone in a way that showed off his talent for making two materials feel like they were always meant to be together. That building stood as the town's post office all the way until 1952. Nearly a century after that first postal station opened its doors, the mail finally stopped running through those particular walls.

But the walls themselves? They're still standing. Alfred Giles built something worth keeping, and Comfort had the good sense to keep it.

What the marker says

From 1856, when Comfort's postal station was established, until this building was constructed in 1910, the town's post office was housed in various mercantile stores. In 1910, while Hermann Ingenhuett was serving as postmaster, this building was completed. Designed by noted San Antonio architect Alfred Giles, the renaissance revival style structure exhibits Giles' talent for blending red brick and limestone. It remained in use as a post office until 1952. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1985