HistoricSiteMarkers
Reconstruction & Gilded Age

Weyrich Building

Boerne, Kendall County, Texas

Marker Inscription

Charles (Carl) Weyrich bought this lot in 1877, shortly after relocating from Gillespie County. Weyrich established himself as a tinsmith and married Sophia Beyer in 1878, commissioning this building around the same time. Weyrich’s business remained here until he divided the lot and sold the building in 1883. A series of businesses, mostly grocery stores, operated here for the next 37 years. The property was later a residence, an office and an art studio. The rectangular-plan vernacular rubble limestone building is one of the oldest commercial structures in Boerne. It features a stone parapet and paired double doors with raised, hood-shaped stone lintels and keystones on the primary façade.

Erected by Texas Historical Commission

The Story

Charles (Carl) Weyrich bought this Boerne lot in 1877 after moving from Gillespie County, working as a tinsmith and commissioning this rubble-limestone building around the time of his 1878 marriage. After he sold it in 1883, a run of grocery stores and later a residence, office, and art studio occupied it. With its stone parapet and hooded lintels, it is among the oldest commercial structures in town.

Why it matters

The Weyrich Building is a surviving example of the German Hill Country's stone craftsmanship and the immigrant tradesmen who anchored early Boerne commerce.

Own a business near here? Add it to the map.

Related people

  • · Charles Weyrich

Themes & tags

Nearby & related markers

W. G. Hughes

Boerne, TX

William George 'Willy' Hughes left Kensington, London, for Texas in 1878 at nineteen to learn the sheep and wool trade, soon building herds of Oxfordshire Downs sheep southwest of Boerne and drawing his brothers to join him. The Hughes Ranch bred cattle, sheep, goats, and horses, and branched into mail delivery, a stage line, tourism, and real estate; by 1887 Willy had become a recognized authority on angora goats and mohair. He opened the Hastings post office in his ranch house in 1890, ran a Hill Country stage line, and gave land for a county school before his death in an 1902 train wreck.

Gugger Homestead

Helotes, TX

In the Texas Hill Country west of San Antonio, Swiss immigrants Anton and Marie Gugger were among the pioneers who settled the little crossroads of Helotes. Around 1881 their son Arnold raised this thick-walled limestone building on the bank of Helotes Creek, where it did triple duty as blacksmith shop, general store, and saloon while the family lived upstairs. It even served twice as the town post office, and its 18-inch rough-course walls still anchor the community more than a century later.

Apelt Armadillo Farm

Center Point, TX

In the late 1890s German immigrant Charles Apelt turned a Texas oddity into an industry, founding the Armadillo Basket Factory on this site after discovering the decorative potential of the nine-banded armadillo's shell. His novelty baskets sold by the tens of thousands, reached the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, and employed dozens of local hunters at the operation's height. The farm supplied shells for lamps and desk sets and even live armadillos to zoos and medical research before it finally closed in 1971.

Mosty Brothers Nursery

Center Point, TX

The son of Belgian immigrants, Leander A. Mosty came to sparsely treed Kerr County in the 1890s and bet that Hill Country settlers would want fruit and pecan trees. From an 1898 orchard along the Guadalupe River his family built one of the Southwest's largest wholesale nurseries, breeding cling and freestone peaches and pecans that still bear the Mosty name. His sons helped organize the Texas nurserymen's association and supplied plants for the 1936 Texas Centennial grounds in Dallas.