The Texas Hill Country is on fire! That may not sound optimistic as you read it, and I don’t intend for it to. Reminiscing back to an old favorite Texas Country song by Randy Rogers:
“The hills of cow gap stood rugged and awesome
But you have to have fill dirt when you're building a road
And the hills of cow gap, they weathered the ages
Got wiped off the map for 12 dollars a load
They call it the hill country, I call it beautiful
I'd call it progress if it could be saved
They call it the hill country I call it home
But what will they call it
When it's levelled and paved?”
As a designer-builder of all things, the massive growth and influence hitting the Hill Country is both exciting and dismal. As newcomers arrive, escaping conflicted cities and states around the country, the folks of this place have no choice but to wonder: what is this place destined to become? Inversely, we are all blessed to keep working and attending schools during a pandemic, and fortunate to take in the massive amount of business hitting our regional economy. Looming over the politics, and the economics though, remains Randy Rogers’ lament that with the blessings of success and progress, we may lose our identity and heritage.
Architecture can save the Texas Hill Country. Sure, architecture can affect the visual. But it can also honor the historic, tell tales, invoke the distant feelings of the past, and summon the senses of a place. Architecture is as much in a highway as it is in a home. Take GRIT Co.’s Historic Homestead project, a fabulous collaboration of historic architecture and modern luxuries completed in 2019. The project is designed into a fictional story spanning 200 years of German heritage and settlement in the Texas Hill Country. The mastermind, author, and architect of the place is highly sought after and is the locally famous Randy Stehling of Stehling Klein Thomas Architects in Fredericksburg.
The highest priority on the project was to honor a fictional story that fits the heritage of this historic place at the confluence of Block Creek and the Guadalupe River, a homestead that factually replaced Native American camps and eventually a watering station along the Old No. Nine Railroad. The fictitious story goes like this (in summary):
Chapter 1
German settlers arrive in the early 1800s from Germania, establishing a tent camp and eventually building a pine or cypress log cabin to set their claim amongst the Native Americans. The log cabin would be simple, likely hand-carved logs and rough-sawn floor boards. Shelving and timbers would have to be mortise and tenon, and dove-tailed together due to the lack of steel product like nails. Local stones would likely be carved for a foundational wall, with the chipped masonry pieces discarded into the inner foundation as hard fill ... nothing to waste. Windows and doors would have to be handmade, and the very few glass pieces charily conveyed from San Antonio de Bexar, forty-five miles to the South. Roofing would be a local hand-split cedar or cypress shingle. The small porch would face South, to catch the southern breeze in the hot Texas summers, and the north wall would stand unyielding with no windows or doors to the cold north winter winds.
Chapter 2
After some hard fought years, maybe decades, the settlers would become tenants of the land, and let’s hope, friends to the natives. God willing, some of their children finally grow and so the homestead as well. With more security and more time, and the progress of the new Texas Republic, the family establishes a stone home nearby. The stones are frustratingly pulled from the fields across Block Creek as the tenants plow. With not a wantin’ for wastin’, the stubborn Germans, married now to Scots-Irish or Polish immigrants, haul the stones across the creek and erect a strong, square, but larger and more comfortable home. Same floor boards, but sawn and sanded to a finer finish, and more windows and doors from the larger markets available in the region. Reluctantly, this home’s porch faces East, embracing the shade from the hundred-fifty-year-old oaks, catching a bit of breeze, but able to cautiously keep an eye on the grandkids budding at the old cabin next door.
Chapter 3
The grandkids have grown now, along with the United States of America, and the Old No. Nine Railroad. Materials and labor are now obtainable. Carpenters and masons arrive for months of work on the new, two-story, much more refined home. Scrolling porch railings and decorative consoles (corbels) adorn the front of the home ... a clear statement of strength and success in this place. Entering the handmade long leaf pine doors, guests are awed by a twisting handrail on a switchback staircase, well-trimmed newel posts, and turned balusters. The stone walls are no longer transported by the grandkids across the creek, but are instead shipped in by oxen from nearby Sisterdale or Waring. Large hand-carved blocks that reside square and firmly on the landscape are as immovable as the families’ determination.
Chapter 4
Some two hundred years have passed. The settlers’ grandkids are now great grandparents. As the German language disappears, so too does the dependency on local materials and craftsmen. The two-toned homes and an old stable wall between have now been converged into one massive home. Concrete poured, gorgeous steel windows from floor to ceiling (can’t miss those views), beautiful millworks, plumbing, and air conditioning now grace the home. The porch still faces South, can’t change the winds of summer in Texas.
Finally, today, three all masonry Rumford fireplaces embrace the home in warmth during cold winters. Double-hung Marvin windows look and feel proper to the period and maintain the highest qualities of present. Steel window walls and French doors visually bring the millennia oaks and landscape right into the home. Smart lighting, wireless sound, and highest-grade HVAC systems make the entire home comfortable and manageable at the lift of a smart phone. An entertaining home, with plenty of options for an ol’ cowboy to kick up his heels and tell tall tales of the roving bands of native Comanche and Apache that camped here; or, where the Old Number Nine Railroad once hustled through the dramatic hills of the Edwards Plateau.
The architecture, styles, interiors, and especially craftsmanship necessary to tell this story require dedication, time, and financial backing. But the story has now been written. And it will be told for a hundred years more. Perhaps in a hundred years, this ranch will be as Randy tells it,
“Uncivilized pagans drank untreated water
Right out of our rivers back in their day
Now those streams bubble with clean treated sewage
While they sit in their hotubs and they sip Perrier.
Scrape off the hilltops, build look alike houses
Move in some people and turn on the TV
After the ball game turn on some old movies
They'll smile when they see how things use to be.”
But if it is, the neighborhood will wonder at the story and the architecture of that old homestead. And let’s hope they will reminisce of old times, marvel at the struggle, and hold on to the heritage. Who knows? Maybe the kids will even find a way to keep it, the Texas Hill Country.