Manuel Guerra Home and Store
Roma, Starr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
German architect Heinrich Portscheller (1840-1915) built this modified classic-revival structure for Manuel Guerra (1856-1915) in 1884. Early local example of sand-struck, hand-cast brick construction. Once used as residence and store, it remains in Guerra family.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In 1884 the German-born architect Heinrich Portscheller designed this modified classical-revival building for merchant Manuel Guerra in the Rio Grande river town of Roma. Its walls of sand-struck, hand-cast brick make it an early and rare local example of that construction method along the border. Serving in its day as both a family home and a store, the structure has stayed in Guerra hands ever since.
Why it matters
The house reflects the distinctive borderland culture of the lower Rio Grande, where European-trained architects and prominent Tejano merchant families together shaped a regional architecture found nowhere else in America.
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Related people
- · Heinrich Portscheller
- · Manuel Guerra
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Heinrich Portscheller
Roma, TX
German-born builder Heinrich Portscheller reached the Rio Grande shortly after the Civil War, when Roma stood as the river's westernmost port and its twin commercial towns hummed with trade. Drawing on brickmaking skills passed down through his family, he opened a brickyard and designed load-bearing brick buildings on both banks of the river, marked by pressed and molded brick, classical columns, iron balconies, and richly detailed cornices. His work still defines much of Roma's National Historic Landmark downtown; in 1894 the railroad boom drew him to Laredo, where he built and worked until his death in 1915.
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