Kiehne-Hermann Home

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna pass it along to you. Way back in 1850, a German-born blacksmith by the name of Frederick Kiehne set out to do something nobody in Fredericksburg had quite managed yet. He was going to build a two-story home.

Now, to be fair, plenty of folks around town had sleeping lofts tucked up under their rooflines, so the idea of getting up off the ground floor wasn't entirely foreign. But a genuine, full second story? That was Frederick Kiehne.

Born in 1811, he wasn't just a man who knew how to work iron at an anvil. He was also a Gillespie County commissioner, which is to say he was the kind of man a community leans on. And when he built, he built like he meant it to last.

Hand-cut limestone. Adobe bricks. Native timbers.

The very materials pioneer builders reached for when they wanted something solid, something that would still be standing long after the builder was gone. Frederick Kiehne died in 1898, and that house was already nearly half a century old by then. The structure didn't sit still over the years, either.

Around the 1860s, somebody decided it needed more room and enlarged it. Then the 1930s came along, with a man named Walter Foerster holding ownership, and the house grew again. Two expansions across the better part of a century, each one a kind of vote of confidence in what Kiehne had started with that limestone and those hand-cut timbers.

Then, in 1973 and 1974, Maria and Ronald Herrmann took on the work of restoration, bringing the old place back to something worthy of its story. A blacksmith's house. The first two-story home in Fredericksburg.

Still standing.

What the marker says

German-born Frederick Kiehne (1811-98), a blacksmith and Gillespie County commissioner, built this structure in 1850. It was the first two-story home in Fredericksburg, although many older residences had sleeping lofts. the hand-cut limestone, adobe bricks, and native timbers were materials often used by pioneer builders. The house was enlarged about the 1860s and again in the 1930s, when Walter Foerster was owner. It was restored in 1973-74 by Maria and ronald Herrmann. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1976