El Globo Nuevo

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I wouldn't change a word. Well, maybe a word or two. You're rolling through Cameron County now, so let me set the scene.

There's a place called El Globo Nuevo, and it is not one building but a complex of two, each with its own story and its own bones. The first thing to know is that this whole enterprise began with brothers. Manuel Garza-Galvan, born in 1847, was the elder.

His brother Adolfo, born in 1856, came along behind him. Both men were Mexican immigrants, and together they built something that has outlasted both of them by a considerable stretch. In 1897, they raised a storehouse, a border brick style building, one story, plaster-faced brick, with a hipped-roof attic above the building's corner bays.

They ran that storehouse together until 1920. Twenty-three years of commerce out of a building that is still standing, still telling its story to anyone who cares to look. Now the other piece of the complex, the one they call the Garza House, that's a free-standing folk Victorian cottage, built a little earlier, circa 1894.

Also plaster-faced brick, but the cottage has jerkin-headed gabled roofs, which is a fine architectural detail and sounds exactly as distinguished as it looks. El Globo Nuevo is considered an early example of Mexican vernacular planning. What does that mean on the ground?

It means a primarily one-room-deep sequence of rooms arranged in an L-plan configuration, paired with separate living quarters. Practical. Intentional.

Elegant in its logic. Now Adolfo, the younger brother, didn't just build the storehouse and move on. He and his wife, Virginia Larrea-Valdez de Garza, born in 1873, made the Garza House their home.

They lived there together, and Virginia stayed on after Adolfo was gone. He died in 1923. His brother Manuel, the elder, made it to 1926.

Virginia, born in 1873, outlasted them both, living in that cottage until her death in 1952. When Virginia passed, the property moved to her sister, Eloisa Larrea Barreda. And here is the part that lands quiet but lands hard.

The property has since stayed in the Barreda family. A storehouse built in 1897. A cottage from circa 1894.

Brothers who came to this country and built something with their hands, in brick, in mortar, in the patient accumulation of years. And the land is still with the family. Some things, if you build them right, just refuse to let go.

What the marker says

El Globo Nuevo is a complex consisting of a one-story border brick style storehouse built in 1897 and operated until 1920 by Mexican immigrants Adolfo Garza-Galvan (1856-1923) and his elder brother, Manuel (1847-1926), and a free-standing folk victorian cottage known as the Garza House built circa 1894. El Globo Nuevo is an early example of Mexican vernacular planning, a primarily one-room-deep sequence of rooms arranged in an l-plan configuration, paired with separate living quarters. The storehouse is plaster-faced brick with a hipped-roof attic above the building's corner bays. The cottage, while also made with plaster-faced brick, has jerkin-headed gabled roofs. Garza and his wife, Virginia Larrea-Valdez de Garza (1873-1952), lived in the house until her death in 1952, upon which the property passed to her sister, Eloisa Larrea Barreda. The property has since stayed in the Barreda family.