Henry Basse House
Fredericksburg, Gillespie County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Descended from the Rev. Henrich S. W. Basse, a Lutheran pastor sent by the Adelsverein to serve German settlers in this area, Henry and Hugo Basse operated the Basse Brothers Cement Yard and created the Basse block, a popular building material in this region. This house, built in 1918-1920 by Henry Basse, is a testament to his business success and is a fine example of Basse block construction. A good local example of Prairie School-influenced design, it features a center passage plan and a three-bay, two-story porch with classical box columns on the first story. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1991
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Descended from a Lutheran pastor sent by the Adelsverein to serve German settlers, Henry Basse and his brother Hugo ran a cement works whose 'Basse block' became a favored building material in the Hill Country. Between 1918 and 1920 Henry built this house as a showcase of that product and his success. Its Prairie School lines and two-story columned porch make it a fine local example of the style.
Why it matters
The house ties together German immigrant heritage and homegrown industry in Fredericksburg, showing how a family's building material literally shaped the town.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Henry Basse
- · Hugo Basse
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Schneider-Klingelhoefer House
Fredericksburg, TX
German craftsmen gave the Texas Hill Country its distinctive look, and this Fredericksburg home carries that heritage in its fachwerk construction—a timber frame with masonry infill brought from the old country. Built around 1870 for a watchmaker and stonemason, it later belonged to a builder and, from the 1920s, to a banker whose family kept it for more than fifty years.
Weber "Das Keller Haus"
Fredericksburg, TX
Stonemason Emil Weber built this small limestone outbuilding over a cellar in 1903 in the German town of Fredericksburg, using it to store vegetables, bacon, sausage, and wine. His son Werner, a woodcarver, later turned it into his workshop, where he designed altars and religious pieces for area churches and carved a lectern now displayed in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Kuenemann House
Fredericksburg, TX
Frederick Kuenemann and his family were part of the great wave of German emigration that founded Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country in the 1840s, arriving in 1846 after a hard overland journey that cost them a daughter's life. The heart of this house is a fachwerk, or half-timbered, dwelling built around 1847—heavy timbers braced diagonally and filled with fieldstone, a building method carried straight from medieval Europe. Over the following decades the family prospered, turning a settler's cottage into a Victorian home ringed by furniture shops, a lumberyard, and a hardware store. The house's transformation mirrors the immigrant family's own rise.
The Meinhardt-Pfeil Home
Fredericksburg, TX
The original limestone section of this Fredericksburg home was built around 1850 by pioneer settlers Albert and Doris Meinhardt. After Doris sold it in 1879 to her former son-in-law G. Adolph Pfeil, a cotton gin owner, he adapted it as a blacksmith shop and later a soda water factory, keeping it in the family until 1939.