Fredericksburg Historic District

Fredericksburg's historic district covers about twelve blocks of a Texas Hill Country town founded in 1846 by German settlers sent by the Adelsverein. Most surviving nineteenth-century buildings are of local limestone, laid as ashlar or rubble, with some fachwerk timber-frame construction. The typical house is a story-and-a-half with a front porch and rear ell, set close to the street. Sunday houses, small town residences kept by country farmers for weekend marketing and church, are a distinctive local type. Notable buildings include the Kammlah House, now a museum, the Tatsch House with its thirteen-foot kitchen fireplace, the 1888 White Elephant Saloon, the St. Mary's church complex and the 1930s reconstruction of the octagonal Vereins-Kirche, originally built in 1846. The district was listed for its architecture and its German community, whose language and customs persist in the town.