The Women's Club Rooms

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Back in 1902 and 1903, the Women's Federated Clubs of Seguin did something nobody in Texas had ever done before. They built a structure meant solely for women's clubs.

First one in the whole state. Now, a building like that doesn't just spring up out of the ground. Somebody's got to make it happen, and that somebody was Mrs.

Joseph B. Dibrell. Under her leadership, these women got to work.

Bazaars, theatricals, ice cream suppers. They held every kind of fundraiser you can imagine until they had five hundred dollars in hand, and five hundred dollars is exactly what it cost. Not a penny over.

C. F. Blumberg was the contractor who put it all together, and when it was done, Seguin had something no other Texas town could claim.

Now, a building with that much history in it tends to move around a little over the years. The structure eventually settled onto its fourth home, and that site came by way of a gift, from Mrs. Edgar Nolte, in 1937.

Generous thing to do, giving land to a piece of history. Then in 1949, utility areas were added to the two original rooms, bringing the place a little further into the modern age while keeping that Greek revival architecture standing proud. That's the style the whole building was built in, clean lines, classical bones, the kind of design that says permanence.

And permanence is exactly what those women had in mind when they started selling ice cream and putting on theatricals to scrape together five hundred dollars and build themselves something that had never been built in Texas before.

What the marker says

Erected 1902-1903 by Women's Federated Clubs of Seguin. Known as the first structure in Texas built solely for women's clubs. To finance building (cost $500), women under leadership of Mrs. Joseph B. Dibrell held bazaars, theatricals, ice cream suppers. C. F. Blumberg was contractor. Present site (the fourth) was a gift of Mrs. Edgar Nolte, 1937. Utility areas were added to the two original rooms in 1949. Architecture is Greek revival.