Texas Architecture

Early pioneers often came to Texas with minimal belongings but they brought with them the building styles of their homeland. Today wherever you travel in the Lone Star State you'll see the building styles influenced by those early settlers.

Nowhere in the state is French heritage more evident that in the community of Castroville, west of San Antonio. Here settlers from the Alsace-Lorraine region of France brought with them the styles with which they were most familiar--homes with three chimneys, ventilation windows (or sometimes doors) near the roofline, and a steeply pitched roof that was distinctly asymmetrical, falling sharply in the back. And to top it all off, some settlers made sure they added a traditional Alsatian good luck symbol: a stone stork on the rooftop.

German settlers also introduced to Texas a distinct architectural style still seen in communities such as Comfort and New Braunfels. Fredericksburg swells with pride for its historic homes, some of which continue as private residences and others that serve as bed-and-breakfasts, providing an excellent way for travelers to get a peek in these historic structures. Among the most charming are the typical 19th-century "Sunday houses." Once owned by farmers who traveled long distances, the small homes permitted rural residents to stay in town for the weekend. Today the old Sunday houses scattered throughout Fredericksburg are easy to identify by their small size and most have half-story exterior staircases.

The styles chosen by their builders were influenced by the surroundings as well. Out on the open range of West Texas, the first settlers didn't set up housekeeping with the idea of creating an architectural statement, they were constructing a dwelling in which to survive sometimes harsh conditions. Early dwellings used native materials to make the simplest of structures -- crude dugouts built using the earth itself as part of the dwelling. Others constructed homes of picket and sotol, first used by Native Americans and Hispanic settlers. Examples of these early houses can still be seen on the Panhandle plains at the Ranching Heritage Center at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.

Adobe made a more permanent structure, and soon settlers were borrowing this Spanish architectural style. Adobe bricks made of mud, grass, and often goat manure were baked in the sun, later to be stacked and finally covered with adobe plaster. Even today, many of these early structures can be seen throughout West Texas in town such as Alpine, Socorro, San Elizario, Sierra Blanca (home of the state's largest adobe courthouse), and Ysleta.