Richard J. and Annie Brieger House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm telling it to you. In Bastrop County, there's a house with a story that's almost too tidy to believe, except every bit of it checks out. It starts with a general merchandise store and a family with a plan.

Theodore and Mary Hasler ran that store, and when it came time to build a proper house for their daughter Annie and her husband Richard J. Brieger, they didn't call just any architect. They called Gus Brieger.

Now, Gus Brieger happened to be Richard's brother. So the man who married the daughter designed the house her parents commissioned, for his own brother. You couldn't draw up a tighter family arrangement if you tried.

Built about 1910, the house came out in the late Victorian Queen Anne style, the kind of place that announces itself on a street and doesn't apologize for it. Richard and Annie moved in, raised five children inside those walls, and by all accounts the house had a way of pulling people together. Social gatherings, the marker says, were often held there.

It was that kind of home. Then came World War II, and the house found a second purpose. Camp Swift was nearby, and the wives of soldiers needed somewhere to land while their husbands were in service.

The Brieger house opened its doors and provided temporary housing to those women. A family home became a small refuge in a difficult time. One house, two brothers, one daughter, five children, a general merchandise store, and a war.

That's a lot of life for four walls to hold.

What the marker says

Theodore and Mary Hasler, owners of a general merchandise store, hired architect Gus Brieger to build this house for their daughter Annie and her husband (Gus' brother) Richard J. Brieger. Built about 1910, the late Victorian Queen Anne style house was home to the Briegers and their five children, and often the setting of social gatherings. During World War II, it also provided temporary housing to wives of soldiers from nearby Camp Swift. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1995