DUANE
Duane's take
The marker's got the story, and here's how I tell it — straight from the official record, with all the truth that deserves. Now out in Gillespie County, there sits a little one-room limestone building that looks, at first glance, like it doesn't amount to much. Simple walls, simple roof.
You might drive right past it. But that would be a mistake. It was 1903 when a stonemason by the name of Emil Weber put the thing together.
And Emil knew what he was doing — limestone stacked tight, built right over a cellar dug into the ground. The whole idea was practical as a pair of good boots: somewhere cool and solid to keep vegetables, bacon, sausage, and wine. A root cellar with walls around it.
The kind of structure a craftsman builds not because it'll get famous, but because it needs to be there. Now here's where the story takes its turn. One of Emil's sons — Werner E.
Weber — took a liking to that little outbuilding. Werner wasn't a stonemason like his father. He was a woodcarver.
And somewhere along the way, he looked at that old storage house, the one that used to hold smoked meat and garden vegetables, and he saw a workshop. So that's what it became. Werner E.
Weber set to work in that humble limestone room, and what came out of it was anything but humble. He designed altars. He carved religious pieces.
Churches across the area bear the mark of his hands. But — and hold on to your hat here — Werner also carved a lectern. A single lectern.
And that lectern is on display in the National Cathedral. In Washington, D.C. A one-room outbuilding in Gillespie County.
A cellar underneath it built for sausage and wine. And from inside those same four limestone walls came a piece of sacred woodwork that stands in one of the most storied cathedrals in the whole country. Werner E.
Weber passed in 1974. But the Keller Haus — Das Keller Haus, as it's properly known — is still standing. Still limestone.
Still simple. Some buildings hold vegetables. Some hold history.
Every once in a while, if a stonemason builds it right and a woodcarver finds it later, a building gets to hold both.
What the marker says
This simple, one-room limestone outbuilding was constructed in 1903 by stonemason Emil Weber. He built the structure, which sat over a cellar, for storing vegetables, bacon, sausage, and wine. One of Weber's sons, Werner E. Weber (d. 1974), a woodcarver, used the building for his workshop. He designed altars and religious pieces for many area churches, and also carved a lectern on display in the National Cathedral at Washington, D. C. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1982