DUANE
Duane's take
Here's what the official marker has to say about the Hinmann House, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, when you're rollin' through Comal County and you spot a two-story limestone house standing there like it has absolutely nowhere to be and no intention of going anywhere — that's a house with a story. That's the Hinmann House.
It starts in July of 1855, when a man named Heinrich Hinmann purchased this property. He and his wife Therese — born a Sickold — planted their roots here, and I mean that almost literally. Because between the two of them, they raised ten children on this land.
Ten. You think about the noise, the meals, the chaos of a household running ten strong, and then you look at those walls — hand-tooled limestone blocks, laid up in regular courses, heavy lintels and sills — and you start to think those walls were built to hold something more than just a roof up. The home itself dates from around 1868, and the architecture tells you straight away where the Hinmanns came from in spirit if not in miles.
That German influence is written right into the bones of the place — the load-bearing masonry, the low-sloping roof, the square wood columns holding up a gallery porch with geometric design railings. This wasn't a house thrown together in a hurry. This was a house somebody intended to last.
And last it did. More than a century as a family residence. But somewhere along the way, in the nineteen-twenties, a member of the family by the name of Dr.
A.J. Hinmann decided those interior spaces could work a little harder. He converted them for his medical practice.
So this house that had already sheltered ten children went right on serving — just in a different kind of way. That's the thing about a house built from limestone this stubborn and this carefully laid. It doesn't retire.
It just finds new work to do.
What the marker says
This home’s architecture reflects the German influence of many of the area’s early structures. Heinrich Hinmann purchased the property in July 1855, and he and his wife Therese (Sickold) raised ten children here. The home dates from circa 1868 and remained a family residence for more than a century, although Dr. A.J. Hinmann converted interior spaces for his medical practice in the 1920s. The two-story house is built of load-bearing masonry with a low-sloping roof. Hand-tooled limestone blocks form regular courses and heavy lintels and sills, and square wood columns support a gallery porch with geometric design railings. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark – 2008