DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's the word on this one, and here's how I tell it. Now, every good story has a man with a vision, and Louis Reuter had two of them. The first one was practical — groceries.
The second one was panoramic — a view. And by 1934, he'd managed to turn both of them into something worth talking about. Louis Reuter was born in 1886, and he spent his early years working as a grocer in his native San Antonio.
That's where he learned the trade, learned the rhythms of it, the weighing and the stocking and the serving. He did that right up until 1918, when something shifted. He came to Austin.
And when he got there, he didn't just open another grocery store — he opened a self-service grocery store. Now, that might not sound like much from where you're sitting, but for its time, that was an innovation. Something new under the Texas sun.
He built his house in 1934, for himself and his wife, and they didn't settle for just any lot in Austin. They found a place with a spectacular view of the city — you can almost picture it, can't you, the couple standing out front, looking out over everything they'd built toward. The house itself is a rambling thing, one story and two stories woven together, dressed in stone veneer, with cast-stone details that catch the light just right and a red barrel-tile roof that tips its hat to the Spanish Colonial Revival style.
Louis Reuter lived until 1945. The house he built outlasted him, sitting up on that hill with that same spectacular view, wearing its red-tiled roof like it's got nowhere else to be. Some things, built right, just stay.
What the marker says
Built in 1934 for Louis Reuter (1886-1945) and his wife, this house offered a spectacular view of the city. Reuter worked as a grocer in his native San Antonio until 1918, when he came to Austin to open a self-service grocery store, an innovation for its time. The rambling one- and two-story stone veneer home reflects influences of the Spanish Colonial Revival style, and features cast-stone details and a red barrel-tile roof. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986