Louis Henne Co.
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Victorian embellishments distinguish this structure, built 1893 by noted local contractor Christian Herry. Owner Louis Henne (1840 -1912) worked in the family tin shop next door, expanded to this site. Third generation now conducts this business. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1973
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Built in 1893 by noted local contractor Christian Herry, this Victorian storefront in New Braunfels grew out of the family tin shop next door. Its owner, Louis Henne, was part of the German craftsman-merchant tradition that shaped the town, and the enterprise he expanded onto this site has passed through three generations. The building's ornamented facade still advertises the confidence of a Gilded Age Main Street business.
Why it matters
Family firms like Henne's, rooted in immigrant craftsmanship, were the backbone of the German-Texan commercial towns of the Hill Country.
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Related people
- · Louis Henne
- · Christian Herry
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The New Braunfels Herald
New Braunfels, TX
On this site in the heart of New Braunfels once stood the Zum Schwarzen Wallfisch — the Black Whale Saloon — before the block became home to the town's newspaper. Established in 1892 by S.R. Whitley and his sons, the New Braunfels Herald was the community's first English-language paper, published here on and off between 1896 and 1944. In a town founded by German immigrants, an English newspaper both chronicled local life and helped draw new businesses and residents to the growing Comal County seat.
New Braunfels: County Seat of Comal County
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This land had long been home to Karankawa, Lipan Apache, Tonkawa, and Waco peoples when the Society for the Protection of German Immigrants sent thousands of colonists to Texas in the mid-1840s. Led by Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels, several hundred founded New Braunfels on Good Friday, 1845, on land bought from the Garza family and parceled out by lottery. By 1850 it ranked among the largest cities in Texas, humming with craftsmen, mills, breweries, and kilns.
Eiband and Fischer General Mercantile
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A general store opened at the corner of Castell and San Antonio Streets in 1846, just a year after New Braunfels was founded, and passed through a succession of German-connected owners over the next century. Growing into one of the region's most successful mercantiles, Eiband & Fischer sold everything from groceries and china to farm machinery, and also served as cotton buyers and short-term bankers. A 1947 fire finally consumed the store, though its surviving annex still stands.
Mill Street Telegraph Station
New Braunfels, TX
In the decades after the telegraph reached the United States, small Texas towns wired themselves into the national grid one line at a time. New Braunfels opened its first station in the 1860s inside the Guadalupe Hotel, where German-speaking schoolteacher August Schmitz tapped out messages; in 1871 the office followed him to his fachwerk (half-timber) house on Mill Street, its mud bricks drawn from Comal Creek. The station shuttled back to the hotel and finally to the railroad depot by 1881, tracing how a frontier town's communications matured.