What’s happening to the old house at 230 W. Mill St? I found out. Jeff and Denise Mund have bought the old Georg Pfeuffer house and they are restoring it. Records show that this is the sixth time that there have been major additions and renovations.

Ownership of the lot on which the house stands was conveyed to Johann Georg Pfeuffer in 1852 and it is assumed that the house was built shortly thereafter. It is one of the early houses in New Braunfels built with fachwerk walls, a custom brought from German architecture. One can see fachwerk construction in present day Germany. Casement windows with unique latches can be seen upstairs. Hand-hewn cedar beams throughout the house and wide cedar beams were used in the ceiling. The full basement contained the kitchen and has a brick floor. In the downstairs area are two original black walnut doors, a wood that was plentiful along the banks of the Guadalupe.

Johann Georg Pfeuffer was born in 1799 in Bavaria. He married Barbett (Barbara) Broschel in 1829 and six children were born to the couple.

Pfeuffer was a tanner and owned several tanneries in Germany. He was quite a prosperous businessman. The children were all educated and servants tended to their needs.

The family does not know why in 1845 Pfeuffer sold all his tanneries, uprooted his family, and signed up with the German Emigration Company to come to Texas. They were among the second group of emigrants and arrived in Galveston in November of 1845. From there the family took a schooner to Indianola.

A near tragedy occurred when they were put on an overloaded schooner. It sank in the bay outside of Indianola. The lives of the family were saved but most of their possessions were lost. Now they were virtually penniless and were stranded on the coast along with the hundreds of other emigrants. They didn’t arrive in New Braunfels until 1848. The 1850 Comal County census lists Georg as 51, Barbett as 44, Valentine as 18, Christopf as 16, Daniel as 12, Barbette as 9, and Anna Marie as 6. The oldest son, also named George, was 20 years old and wasn’t listed in this census. He was known to have moved to Corpus Christi at the time.

Sometime between 1852 and 1860, the elder Georg Pfeuffer began a tannery in the basement of his home on Mill St.( Source: “Texas and Texans”,1914 translation). Inquiring about the process of tanning, I asked Al Ludwig, the g-g grandson of Georg Pfeuffer and owner of Ludwig Leather Co. on Seguin Street. He said that the process was done by soaking the hide in tannin extracted from oak trees to produce leather that was soft and durable. The word Tanne is an old German word for oak or pine trees (hence the word Tannenbaum). How did this family survive with the tannery in the basement?

Family records state that Georg Pfeuffer was very opinionated about the politics of the day. He signed the petition in Comal County calling for secession. Four sons fought in the Civil War.

About that time the young Georg Pfeuffer returned to New Braunfels from Corpus. This Pfeuffer son became the most prominent in the family, as he was a Texas Senator and responsible for the capitol in Austin being constructed of Texas Granite. Later he became president of Texas A&M College. To read more about him, log on to Sophienburg.com Nov. 26, 2008.

Johann Georg Pfeuffer (Sr.) died in 1886. Thereafter the house was conveyed to the Baetge family. In 1942 Arthur Baetge as executor of the Baetge estate sold the house to Annie Lehman who, in turn, conveyed it to her son Leroy Lehman in 1954.

Leroy Lehman and his wife Agnes raised one son and four daughters in this home. Some changes were made to the home to accommodate their growing family. The August Koch map of 1881 shows the house without the side porch that the Lehmanns added. Ernest Lehman, son of the Leroy Lehmans, recently brought the original pillars to the Munds.

The City of New Braunfels designated the house as a historic landmark. All of us in New Braunfels benefit from restoration projects like the Munds have taken on.

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By Tara V. Kohlenberg —

Main Plaza. We drive around it every day. It captures the imagination and baffles the tourists (and sometimes the new locals). It’s a magical place in the heart of our community that dons “new clothes” for each occasion, no matter the season, drawing us into the scene. Ever wonder how that came to be? It was created that way by our ancestors.

When the first German immigrants came to New Braunfels in 1845, surveyor Nicholas Zink laid out the town in the European tradition, with a large open public space in the center, used for meetings and celebrations. In German, the space is known as a Platz. In Italian, Piazza. In American, Plaza. You might think, well, that’s the same thing as a town square. Except, that it is different. If you look at most of the town squares across Texas, like in Seguin or San Marcos, you will find the courthouse quite literally sitting smack in the middle of the square. Our courthouse was purposely built on the edge of the Plaza, to maintain the feel of their German homeland, with the people’s space in the middle. In New Braunfels, it is Main Plaza.

For the first, say fifty years, the plaza was a completely open space, where horses and wagons could travel in whatever direction they desired. More recently, I hear people call Main Plaza a “roundabout” or “traffic circle,” as if it is merely a function of traffic patterns. But it is not. In fact, the first to occupy the big open space was the fountain. The Plaza Fountain was added in 1895 with money left over from the 50th Anniversary Celebration of New Braunfels. Protective curbing came later to keep the horses from drinking out of the fountain.

The Bandstand (it is not now, nor has it ever been a gazebo) was built in 1905 to stage musical and singing programs. It used to have public restrooms and storage space underneath for chairs. The monuments of Civil War and World War I Soldiers were dedicated to honor the fallen sons of New Braunfels. The landscaping, sidewalks and trees have changed over the years, as has the location of the monuments, but the sentiment of community pride tied to Main Plaza has always been the same. At one time, the Schmitz Hotel changed hands. The new owner remodeled and changed the name to The Plaza Hotel. The hotel has since been restored to its original name and façade. New Braunfels Coffee shop was once Plaza Drugstore.

That is the story of Main Plaza, but that is not the end. “Main” in front of something indicates that there must be more. More plazas? Yep! There were more! This generation does not have the lock on green space. Two plazas that still exist were born out of function. Butchers took animals from hoof to table, and it could be a messy, smelly business. They were relegated to the outer edges of town to keep the flies away. Market Square, off Comal Avenue and bordered by Tolle on both sides, was for the butchers. The tannery was just beyond that toward the Comal River, well, because those businesses just go together. Market Square has recently undergone a wonderful makeover. Keep your eyes open for upcoming summer music events there.

Another plaza near downtown, is Haymarket Plaza (now Park). The name is fairly straight-forward. It was the site of the hay market. It is located on Comal Avenue, also bordered by Hampe and Simon (pronounced See-mon) Street. The area was once part of Lindheimer’s farm. It also was the site of an African-American school. In 1964, the Naval Reserve built a radio training center on a small corner of the property.

The last two plazas are not quite as easy to see anymore. They also require a little more backstory. After Prince Carl laid out New Braunfels on the west bank of the Comal, the Veramendi Garza family laid out their property on the east bank. They named the city Comaltown. Immigrants arriving in 1848 bought property in Comaltown. Twenty-two years later, the remainder of the Veramendi properties were divided and sold as Braunfels. Braunfels was bounded on the north by North Street and to the south by South Street and the east by East Street. So simple. Both had centrally located public spaces called plazas on the earliest maps. Comaltown was bordered by Garza Street and the river. The Comaltown plaza was bordered by Austin, Guadalupe (now Houston), Union and Garza. In 1850, M.A. Dooley gave Lot 4 on the corner of Austin and Guadalupe for the building of a school. The German American Union School was chartered in 1852. It became known as Comal Union School. It was later used as an African American school until about 1935. The property across the street from the school later became known as Union Plaza. The NBISD donated Union Plaza in 1954 to build the New Braunfels Hospital, now Christus New Braunfels.

The other plaza in Braunfels was called East Braunfels Plaza. It was bordered by Veramendi, Commerce, Main, and Houston. At one time, Fire hose cart Company No. 4 and fire warning bell was located in the middle of the that plaza. In 1924, there was great discussion and an election to decide where to build the new Ward School of NBISD. The board leaned strongly toward Union Plaza, but the citizens wanted East Braunfels Plaza to be the site of the new school named for the second president of the Republic of Texas, Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar. It is still there.

Our Main Plaza has been the site of public meetings, grand Anniversary events, 4th of July celebrations and parades, Diez y Seis parades, anti-Prohibition events, cotton markets, Cinco de Mayo and Wurstfest celebrations. Some plazas now have hospitals and schools, but our ancestors purposely planned the plazas as spaces for public use. Thank them for their forward thinking and relish the spaces in our downtown.

Sources: Sophienburg Museum & Archives; Herald-Zeitung archives.

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