Lindheimer House
489 Comal Ave., New Braunfels, TXThe Ferdinand Lindheimer House in New Braunfels, Texas, was built about 1852 and is typical of the simple homes built by the highly educated German immigrants in Texas. It is reminiscent of the peasant cottages in the Rhineland and Alsace and is of fachwerk, the medieval building technique using a heavy timber frame with diagonal bracing in Texas customarily filled with limestone rubble and then stuccoed. The rear of this house has the fachwerk exposed. The Lindheimer House has the standard saltbox profile and absence of ornamental detail also typical of its type.
Lindheimer was born May 21, 1801, in Frankfort-on-Main, Germany. He is now known as "the Father of Texas Botany". He was a pupil of the Swiss-German educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and specialized in medicine and botany at Bonn University. Later, he taught at the Bunsen School at Frankfort, where two of his more famous students were Johann David Passavant, a German art historian and painter, and Robert Wilhelm von Bunsen, inventor of the Bunsen burner.
In 1833 Lindheimer participated in the Frankfurter Putsch and was forced to flee to the United States. He spent the years from 1834 to 1836 visiting Princeton University, St. Louis, and Veracruz, Mexico. In 1836 he decided to join Texas forces in their fight against Mexico. During the revolution, he was stationed on Galveston Island as part of a Coast Guard unit.
After the war, Lindheimer began his botanical work in Texas. He used New Braunfels as a base and spent months traveling around the state. Eventually, he organized the plant life of Texas into a system, and today, his name is contained in the botanical titles of over thirty-two varieties of native flora.
In 1852 Lindheimer built a home in New Braunfels and began to publish a weekly newspaper, "Die Neu Braunfels Zeitung".
His home reflects his change of interest from botany to writing, for he incorporated a print shop into the rear of the structure. Lindheimer continued to edit and publish his paper until 1872. When he died on December 2, 1879, he left behind entomological collections in Madrid and St. Louis museums, and in university collections in the United States and abroad.
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967.
Bibliography
Bracken, Dorothy Kendall. Early Texas Homes. Dallas, 1956.
Webb, Walter Prescott, ed. Handbook of Texas. Austin, 1952. Marker files.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.