E. O. Finn Building

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the E. O. Finn Building in Bellville.

Now, before we get to the building itself, we ought to start with the ground it sits on. That land was originally granted by the Mexican government to an Austin County pioneer by the name of John Nichols. So the story goes back a good ways before a single brick was ever laid.

Fast forward to 1896. Two men, E. Oscar Finn and John Thomas Colleton, put up what the marker calls a vernacular Italianate commercial building.

That's a fancy way of saying it was a working man's building dressed up with some style, and we'll get to just how much style in a moment. Now, E. O.

Finn himself, born in 1866, was a native of Germany. He first came to this country with his parents in 1869. He grew up to be a master mechanic and a smithy of buggies and wagons.

So when he built this structure, he had a clear purpose in mind. The first floor was a sales shop for his products. Wagons, buggies, the kind of craftsmanship you don't see rolling off an assembly line.

And upstairs, where the noise of the shop floor faded a little, his family made their home. Here's the part that makes you appreciate a man who thought things through. Drinking water came from a well located right there inside the building, on the first floor.

And for the rest of the water supply, rainwater was collected from the roof into a metal-lined indoor cistern, then piped into the upstairs bathroom. This man built his own weather-fed plumbing into the walls. That is not nothing.

And if you needed to move something between the basement and the upper stories without hauling it up the stairs yourself, well, Finn had thought of that too. There is a hand-operated dumbwaiter in this building, made by the Energy Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia, running from the basement all the way up through the first and second stories. A Philadelphia machine in an Bellville carriage shop.

The world was already smaller than people sometimes remember. The building stayed in the Finn family for over seventy-five years. E.

O. Finn lived until 1945, and long after he was gone, the structure kept his name. People around Bellville also know it as the Carriage House, which tells you something about what it meant to the town.

And the building itself, it still carries its character. Paired Italianate windows. Cast iron columns.

The kind of details a man puts on a building when he intends for it to last. The marker calls it a reminder of Bellville's early commercial development. I'd call it a little more than that.

It's the story of a German immigrant who came to Texas in 1869, learned his craft, built something handsome and practical and clever, and put his name on it. And here we are, still saying it.

What the marker says

Situated on land originally granted by the Mexican government to Austin County pioneer John Nichols, this vernacular Italianate commercial building was constructed in 1896 by E. Oscar Finn and John Thomas Colleton. E.O. Finn (1866-1945), a native of Germany, first came to this country with his parents in 1869. A master mechanic and a smithy of buggies and wagons, Finn built this structure to serve as a sales shop for his products on the first floor with living quarters for his family on the upper story. Drinking water was obtained from a well located inside the building on the first floor, while the remainder of the water supply was piped into the upstairs bathroom from a metal-lined indoor cistern that collected rainwater from the roof. The structure remained in the Finn family for over seventy-five years. The E.O. Finn building, or Carriage House as it is also known, features paired Italianate windows, cast iron columns, and a hand-operated dumbwaiter which was made by the Energy Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia and runs from the basement to the first and second stories. The structure is a reminder of Bellville's early commercial development. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1982