The hidden features of the Schreiner Mansion

The Schreiner Mansion at sunrise, Kerrville, 2018

I’ve missed you, Gentle Reader.

Over the last few months, while I was away, I’ve been working on a biography of Captain Charles Schreiner. I know when we think of him today, we tend to focus on his later years, when he was a wealthy benefactor for Kerr County — a rich man who gave back to his community. One of his most lasting gifts was a school, which is known today as Schreiner University.

The story of Charles Schreiner’s life will surprise you. What I've learned certainly surprised me. It's quite a tale.

Working on this book has meant slowing down and really looking at things, and I invite you to take a tour with me of a place so familiar most of us never really notice it. You can find it in the 200 block of Earl Garrett Street, between Schreiner Goods and the Kerr Arts and Cultural Center: the “Schreiner Mansion.”

Around 1900. Note iron balconies on left.

This tour I am offering can be taken at any time, and it’s free. While this tour won’t visit the inside of the building — there are tours of its rooms available Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 am to 2 pm — we will wander around the old building and see what stories its exterior can tell us.

Over the last few months, I’ve visited the old home, looking at it from the sidewalks which surround it, and I’ve seen some things I’ve never noticed before, including the head of a lion, snarling, with its mouth opened in a silent roar. More on him, later.

Start by standing in front of the mansion. 

In the late 1870s, and for the first time in his life, Charles Schreiner had some money. In 1879, he did two important things with this newly-earned wealth: he bought out his business partner, August Faltin of Comfort; and he built his wife a house.

The engraved stone which was once
in the center of the house

Evidence of that first house can still be seen at the Schreiner Mansion today. The building we see there today looked very different from what the Schreiner family moved into in 1879. The earliest house had no balconies with curved stone arches, and was about half the width of today’s structure. It was a plain, but solid, rectangle of a house.

Standing on the Earl Garrett sidewalk, facing the front door of the building, you’ll notice something I failed to notice in my previous six decades of passing the house. The stones on the front wall are different. To the left of the door, under the balcony, they’re smooth, with an almost sanded appearance; to the right, they're more roughly dressed.

The smooth-faced stones show the shape of the original house. On the bottom floor, there were two windows and a door; on the top floor, three windows across. This same pattern is repeated at the back of the house, though mirror-reversed. You can see these from the back of the house, in the plaza in front of Kerrville’s city hall.

Looking up at the second story of the smooth wall, in what would have been the center of the original construction, is a carved stone reading “Chas. Schreiner 1879.” The roof confirms the original layout of this first house — it’s a pitched roof covering that original rectangle footprint.

The next phase of construction, completed in 1895, added a kitchen and parlor, plus more rooms upstairs. The final addition came in 1897, when the towers, porch and balcony were added, facing Earl Garrett Street. With the 1897 addition, the house we see before us was completed.

That first portion of the house, completed in 1879, was home to the Schreiner family. It was a large family: Charles and Magdalena Schreiner had eight children, five sons and three daughters. In 1879, when the family moved in, one of the daughters hadn’t been born, yet: the baby, Frances Hellen Schreiner Jeffers, who was born in 1881. At the time the Schreiners moved into their new house, the other children ranged in age from seventeen (Aimé Charles) to two (Walter Richard).

The lion facing the rising sun

There’s one feature which surprised me when I first noticed it this year: a lion’s head, facing the rising sun, on the eastern corner of the house. Standing on the sidewalk separating the mansion from the Kerr Arts and Cultural Center (the old post office), look up to the gutters along the edge of the roof. The lion’s head is in the corner between the porch and the tower at the top of the downspout, decorating the bowl-shaped collector at the junction of the gutter. There’s no telling how many people it’s watched travel along the sidewalk, each completely unaware it was there, watching them. Some believe having the image of a lion on your house will bring prosperity.

Until next week, all the best.

Joe Herring Jr. is a Kerrville native who enjoys investigating Kerr County history.  This column originally appeared in the Kerrville Daily Times May 14, 2022. 

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