The Eggeling Hotel
New Braunfels, Comal County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Emilie (Kuse) (1854-1930) and Theodor Eggeling (1851-1916), who owned the nearby Plaza Hotel, built this second establishment in 1898-1900. New Braunfels contractor Christian Herry supervised the construction of the galleried building. Later renamed the Comal Hotel, the business was operated by members of the Eggeling family for over 50 years. The hotel dining room was popular with townspeople as well as with overnight guests. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1979
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Already owners of the nearby Plaza Hotel, Emilie and Theodor Eggeling built this second, galleried hostelry in New Braunfels in 1898–1900, hiring local contractor Christian Herry to raise it. Later renamed the Comal Hotel, it stayed in the family for more than half a century, its dining room a favorite of townspeople as well as travelers. It reflects the enterprise of the German families who built and ran the businesses of New Braunfels.
Why it matters
Family-run hotels were the commercial heart of small Texas towns, and this one reflects the industrious German immigrant community that shaped New Braunfels.
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Related people
- · Emilie Eggeling
- · Theodor Eggeling
- · Christian Herry
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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.
New Braunfels: County Seat of Comal County
New Braunfels, TX
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
New Braunfels, TX
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.
Comal County, C.S.A.
New Braunfels, TX
During the Civil War, Comal County and its seat of New Braunfels—settled by German immigrants—became a manufacturing and supply center for the Confederacy, its local newspaper pressing the secessionist cause so hard that the 1861 vote favored secession 239 to 86. More than 300 men enlisted, forming companies that fought in the New Mexico campaign, the recapture of Galveston, and the Red River Campaign. Local mills produced gunpowder, cloth, flour, and paper, and one firm even ordered European machinery to make newsprint from corn shucks before wartime losses ended the project.