DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll give it to you straight from the source. Now, Galveston has always had a way of drawing people in from the far corners of the world, and Julius H. Ruhl was no exception.
He came from Prussia — crossed an ocean and landed in Galveston in 1872, which takes a certain kind of nerve no matter what century you're doin' it in. He found his footing working for the mercantile firm of Kauffman and Runge, serving as cashier and clerk. And by 1874, just two years after arriving on this island, he was building himself a home.
Construction ran through 1874 into 1875, and what he put up was not some modest little shelter against the Gulf winds. No. Julius Ruhl built something worth looking at.
The residence is Italianate in style — and if you're standing in front of it right now, let your eyes do the work. There's a two-story porch with classical colonettes, the kind of detail that says somebody gave this real thought. Run your gaze up to the roofline and you'll find a bracketed cornice.
And crowning the whole composition, right at the center, a triangular pediment. It is the architecture of a man who intended to stay. He didn't stay long enough.
Julius H. Ruhl died in 1882, just a decade after coming ashore. But the house he built outlasted him by a long measure.
It remained in the Ruhl family all the way until 1962 — nearly ninety years of the same family holding onto those walls, that porch, those colonettes. Some buildings are just structures. This one is a long, quiet argument that a man from Prussia made in wood and brick on a Texas island — and for the better part of a century, his family kept right on making it.
What the marker says
A native of Prussia, Julius H. Ruhl came to Galveston in 1872. He served as cashier and clerk for the mercantile firm of Kauffman & Runge until his death in 1882. This home, which Ruhl had constructed in 1874-75, remained in his family until 1962. The residence exhibits Italianate detailing and features a fine, two-story porch with classical colonettes, a bracketed cornice along the roof line, and a central triangular pediment. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1984