August Faltin Building
Comfort, Kendall County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Prussian native Friedrich August Faltin (1830-1905) moved to Comfort in 1856 and purchased the general merchandise business of Theodor Goldbeck, located at this site. Trained in his father's store, which had been established about 1818 in Danzig, Prussia, now Gdansk, Poland, Faltin became a leading merchant of the Texas Hill Country. In addition, his 1869 partnership with Capt. Charles Schreiner of Kerrville became the nucleus of the vast Schreiner enterprises. By the late 1870s Faltin's business, which included banking and post office services, had outgrown the structure at this site and he had architect Alfred Giles of San Antonio design a new building. Constructed by the noted builder J. H. Kampmann, the Victorian Italian edifice was completed in 1879. Later run by Faltin's sons Richard and August S., the business was sold in 1907 to their brother-in-law Dan Holekamp and his sons Otto and Edgar. That same year an addition to the building was completed. Also designed by Giles, it included second floor space for meetings of fraternal and civic groups. In 1968 the property was sold back to the Faltin family. The August Faltin Building remains as a symbol of the area's early commercial growth. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1982
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1856 a young Prussian merchant named Friedrich August Faltin arrived in the German-settled town of Comfort and bought out a local general store, bringing the retailing skills he had learned in his father's shop in Danzig. Over the next quarter-century he built one of the Texas Hill Country's leading mercantile houses, adding banking and postal services and, in 1869, forming a partnership with Charles Schreiner that seeded the sprawling Schreiner enterprises. His business outgrew its quarters, and in 1879 he commissioned San Antonio architect Alfred Giles to design the Victorian Italian building that still stands here.
Why it matters
The store traces how immigrant merchants knit the isolated Hill Country into wider markets, turning frontier crossroads into enduring commercial towns.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Friedrich August Faltin
- · Charles Schreiner
- · Alfred Giles
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Arno Schwethelm Building
Comfort, TX
Built in 1916 by merchant Arno Schwethelm to house a leading Hill Country mercantile, this native-limestone building married a modern commercial function to the stonework of German immigrant craftsmen. Designed by San Antonio architect L. Harrington and raised by mason Otto Bartel, it even reused materials from an earlier structure on the spot.
Peter Joseph Ingenhuett Homestead
Comfort, TX
German immigrant Peter Joseph Ingenhuett (1833–1923) settled on a farm near Comfort in the 1850s, part of the wave of German settlers who gave the Texas Hill Country its distinctive character. After marrying Marie Karger in 1861, he moved into town and opened businesses along High Street—a hotel, saloon, and livery stable—and served nearly 25 years as postmaster. The small cottage behind the property was the family's first home until a larger house was built in 1888.
Paul Ingenhuett Home
Comfort, TX
Born in 1868 on this Comfort block, Paul Ingenhuett succeeded his father Peter Joseph in the family mercantile business, then branched into farming, sheep and cattle ranching, and helped found the Comfort State Bank. In 1897 he hired noted architect Alfred Giles—already at work on other Comfort buildings—to design this home, built of limestone quarried on family land.
Ludwig Hein Home
Comfort, TX
Ludwig Hein came to Texas from Germany in 1877, married Rosa Treiber of Waring, and built this Victorian home in Comfort before 1900, running a blacksmith shop next door until the family moved to San Antonio in 1914. From 1923 to 1955 the house earned the nickname "nerve center" of Comfort, when the town's telephone switchboard operated inside it. It was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1987.