The Lay-Bozka House

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, there are houses, and then there are houses that make you stop the car. The Lay-Bozka House, sitting in Lavaca County, is the second kind.

People around here have taken to calling it the Wedding Cake House, and once you lay eyes on it, you'll understand why that name stuck. But the story behind the walls is just as rich as the walls themselves. And those walls, friend, run eighteen to twenty-four inches thick.

Native stone, every bit of it. This was not a house built to be ignored, and it was not built in a hurry. Construction ran from 1878 all the way to 1882, and when the final bill came due, it read four thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars.

The man footing that bill was Dr. James E. Lay, a local physician and Civil War veteran, a man who apparently believed that if you were going to build something, you were going to build something.

Now here is where the story takes a turn that makes you set down your coffee. The architect Dr. Lay hired was a man named Victor Hugo.

A French diplomat. Whether that name gives you pause or not, it should, because a French diplomat designing a stone mansion in Texas in the 1870s is exactly the kind of detail that sounds like somebody made it up. Nobody made it up.

The roof he specified was a Mansard, proper and proud. The wood throughout was cypress. And the windows, well, they didn't bother matching them.

Variant designs, variant sizes, scattered across those thick stone faces like the house itself couldn't quite make up its mind, or maybe just refused to be conventional. That combination, the stone, the cypress, the Mansard roof, those mismatched windows, earned this place a reputation as one of the distinctive structures of nineteenth century Texas. That is not nothing in a state full of ambitious building.

The house passed through time, as houses do, and by 1948 it had come into the hands of a man named M. I. Bozka, a former mayor, who made it his business to own it and preserve it.

His name is now joined to the house, right there in the title, which is its own kind of legacy. The Wedding Cake House still stands, stone walls thick as a courthouse, roof like something drawn by a diplomat with a flair for the dramatic, windows looking out at Lavaca County with an expression that can only be described as knowing. Some things get built to last.

This one meant it.

What the marker says

One of distinctive structures of 19th century Texas. Sometimes called the "Wedding Cake House". Built 1878-1882 by B. J. E. Dietz at cost of $4,750 for Dr. James E. Lay, local physician and Civil War veteran. The architect was Victor Hugo, a French diplomat. Native stone walls are 18 to 24 inches thick. Wood used was cypress. Mansard roof. Windows of variant designs and sizes. Owned and preserved since 1948 by former Mayor M. I. Bozka. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark, 1968