DUANE
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Duane's take
The way the marker tells it, here's what I know about the Remschel House in Gonzales County. Around 1907, a house went up on this piece of Texas ground, and from the very start it was built to last. The man behind it was Julius Frederick Remschel, and he and his wife Luella, born a McLeod, were calling this place home.
Now Julius Frederick didn't come from nothing. His father, Julius H. H.
Remschel, had made the journey over from Germany and planted roots in Gonzales, founding the Remschel Lumber Company back in 1888. So when it came time to build a house, you might say timber was already in the family's blood. The marker says the man who actually raised the walls was a local builder named Fred Meisenhelder, and Fred knew what he was doing.
He framed up a one-story Victorian residence, the kind of house that carries itself with a certain quiet dignity. The siding he used came from locally grown cypress, which means the trees that shaded this Texas soil eventually became the very walls keeping the weather out. And the house doesn't just sit on the ground either.
It stands elevated on brick columns, and those columns were manufactured right there at the Gonzales Sunset Brick and Tile Company. Local lumber, local brick, local builder. Gonzales put this house together from the inside out.
Nearly a century later, in 1997, it was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. Some houses are built to shelter a family for a generation. This one turned out to be built for a good deal longer than that.
What the marker says
Built about 1907 as the home of Julius Frederick Remschel and his wife Luella (McLeod), this house was constructed by local builder Fred Meisenhelder. Remschel was the son of Julius H. H. Remschel, a German immigrant who founded the Remschel Lumber company in 1888. The one-story Victorian residence, built with siding made from locally grown cypress, is elevated on brick columns manufactured at the Gonzales Sunset Brick and Tile Company. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1997