Domino Parlor
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The original part of this stone structure, containing a cellar with a vaulted ceiling, was built in the early 1850s on property owned by John Schmidtzinsky, a pioneer area settler. Once used as a pharmacy, it housed H. R. Richter's jewelry store in the early 1900s. Richter also sold musical instruments, and the front room was used for concerts. His family lived in the rear section of the building. In recent years a cafe and a domino parlor have been located here. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1980
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The oldest part of this stone building, with its vaulted-ceiling cellar, went up in the early 1850s on land owned by pioneer settler John Schmidtzinsky. Over the decades it served as a pharmacy and then H. R. Richter's jewelry store, where he also sold instruments and hosted concerts in the front room while his family lived in the rear. In more recent years it housed a cafe and a domino parlor.
Why it matters
The building's shifting uses—pharmacy, jewelry shop, concert room, cafe—trace the everyday commercial life of a Hill Country town founded by German immigrants.
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Related people
- · John Schmidtzinsky
- · H. R. Richter
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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Market Square (Mark Platz)
Fredericksburg, TX
From Fredericksburg's founding in 1846, Market Square—Marktplatz to the German settlers—stood at the town's center, then still ringed by heavy forest. The octagonal Vereins Kirche rose the next year in the middle of Main Street, serving at once as church, school, meeting hall, and a refuge in case of raids, while a jail and public schoolhouse followed in the 1850s. Rebuilt in the 1930s as a pioneer memorial, the church became the county's first museum and library, and the square remains the community's gathering place.
Gillespie County
Fredericksburg, TX
Once crossed by the trails of roving Indian peoples, these Hill Country lands were settled by German immigrant pioneers in 1846, with a group of Mormons founding Zodiac the next year. The county was created and organized in 1848 and named for Richard Addison Gillespie, a Texas frontier defender and Mexican War captain who was killed at the Battle of Monterrey in 1846. Fredericksburg became its seat.
Old Gillespie County Courthouse
Fredericksburg, TX
When Gillespie County's commissioners hired San Antonio architect Alfred Giles to raise this native-limestone courthouse in 1881–82, they were giving civic permanence to a frontier German-Texan community barely a generation old. Its careful symmetry made it the county's second and grandest courthouse, serving justice until 1939 before a gift from the McDermotts restored it as a library and community hall. The stone itself, quarried nearby, ties the building to the Hill Country landscape it governed.