DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how Duane's gonna pass it along to you. Now, when the Germans came to New Braunfels in 1845, they came by the boatload, practically — and Joseph Klein was one of them. He made the crossing, found his footing in that new Texas hill country town, and by around 1852 he'd put up a simple frame house right there at the corner of San Antonio and Market Streets.
Nothing fancy. Four walls, a roof, a place to call his own in a land that was still figuring out what it wanted to be. That little house did its job.
Then, in 1859, Klein sold the property to a man named William Kuse — a shoemaker — and Kuse being a practical sort of fellow, he kept his shop right there in part of the house itself. Work where you live, live where you work. Made good sense.
Now here's where the story takes a turn. Kuse's daughter Emilie — born in 1854 — she married a man named Theodor Eggeling, born in 1851, and together they had ambitions bigger than a shoemaker's frame house. In 1898, Emilie and Theodor built the Eggeling Hotel on that very spot.
And that little house Klein had raised up nearly fifty years before? Well, they didn't tear it down. They moved it — slid it right to the back of the lot — like it had earned the right to stick around and watch what came next.
Emilie passed in 1903. Theodor in 1916. The hotel rose and fell with the years.
But that simple frame house Klein built about 1852? It's still there. Some things in Texas just refuse to leave.
What the marker says
One of the German immigrants who arrived in New Braunfels in 1845, Joseph Klein built this simple frame house about 1852. Origianally it stood at the corner of San Antonio and Market Streets. In 1859 Klein sold the property to William Kuse, a shoemaker who kept his shop in part of the house. The structure was moved here to the back of the lot in 1898, when Kuse's daughter Emilie (1854-1903) and her husband Theodor Eggeling (1851-1916) built the Eggeling Hotel. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark -1979