Kuenemann House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. The Kuenemann House, Gillespie County. September 1845.

Frederick Kuenemann and his family push away from the docks at Bremen, Germany, and set sail for Texas. Now, crossing the Atlantic was no small thing — but what waited on the other side was harder still. Once they landed, they found themselves walking epidemic-crowded roads toward New Braunfels.

Walking. And somewhere along those roads, they lost a daughter. Just like that, grief laid down alongside them on the journey, and they carried it the rest of the way.

They arrived in newly settled Fredericksburg in 1846, and they stayed. The ground floor of what would become the Kuenemann House was probably built in 1847 — a year after that arrival — by a man named Heinrich Schupp. And he built it the old way.

Fachwerk, the Germans called it. Half-timbered. Heavy timbers with diagonal bracing, and the spaces between filled in with fieldstone.

It is, straight down to its bones, a classic example of European medieval building method, standing there in the Texas Hill Country like a memory the family carried over the water. Frederick Kuenemann bought that dwelling in 1866. He knew what he was getting, and apparently he knew what he was building toward.

By 1875, the house passed to the eldest Kuenemann son, Heinrich, along with three adjoining town lots. And Heinrich, it turns out, had a head for business. What grew up around that old fachwerk cottage was something considerable — furniture shops right next to the main house, a large lumberyard across the street, and a hardware store on Main Street.

A whole family enterprise, spreading out through Fredericksburg block by block. And then the house itself started changing clothes, so to speak. By the 1880s, a kitchen had been added.

A second floor went up, with a double gallery. And somebody decided the whole thing needed Victorian gingerbread trim — that elaborate, fanciful woodwork that says, loud and clear, we have arrived. From a settler's cottage to a Victorian showpiece, the Kuenemann House dressed itself up right alongside the family's fortunes.

The marker calls it a classic Texas story, the evolution of that house — and it's hard to argue. A family sails from Bremen, walks epidemic roads, buries a child on the way to Fredericksburg, and a few decades later they're running furniture shops and a lumberyard and a hardware store on Main Street, and living in a house with a double gallery and gingerbread trim. The last Kuenemann left the house in 1929.

After that it became a nursing home, then a private residence. But the bones of Heinrich Schupp's 1847 fachwerk are still in there — fieldstone and heavy timber — holding everything up, same as they always did.

What the marker says

Frederick Kuenemann and his family sailed from Bremen, Germany in September 1845. Once in Texas they faced great hardship, walking epidemic-crowded roads to New Braunfels, suffering the death of one daughter on the way and arriving in newly settled Fredericksburg in 1846. In 1866 Kuenemann bought the 'fachwerk" or "half-timbered" dwelling which comprises the ground floor of the house. Probably built in 1847 by Heinrich Schupp, the frame of heavy timbers and diagonal bracing filled with fieldstone is a classic example of European medieval building method. In 1875 the eldest Kuenemann son, Heinrich, was given the home and three adjoining town lots. The family business complex came to include furniture shops adjacent to the main house, a large lumberyard across the street, and a hardware store on Main Street. By the 1880s a kitchen, second floor with double gallery, and Victorian gingerbread trim had been added to the main house. The evolution of the Kuenemann house from typical early settler's cottage to affluent Victorian grandeur is a classic Texas story like that of the family itself. The last Kuenemann left the house in 1929; it was then used as a nursing home and private residence. (1998)