Kennard House
621 St. Louis St., Gonzales, TXThe Kennard House in Gonzales, Texas, is a fine late Victorian residence, a late manifestation of the Queen Anne style, and one of the few of its type now remaining in the state. The residence has been carefully restored and is unusual in that its gables are covered with a mosaic of bright glass and pottery chips. There is a two-story central portico with shingled Romanesque arches at the first level and an open colonnaded gallery at the second. The pediment has a slightly Palladian window and mosaic siding. A tall and bold tower with shingled Romanesque arcaded belvedere stands ton one side of the porch with a wrap-around porch on the other side. The whole exterior is painted green. The windows are of French beveled glass and Tiffany leaded glass and the floors are inlaid wood.
The house was built by Mr. and Mrs. James Blake Kennard in 1895 and became a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1967. James Kennard was from a pioneer family in Navasota, Texas. In the early 1890s, he married Anna Braches, a member of one of the first families to settle in Gonzales County, and granddaughter of Charles Braches, a member of the State Legislature. A member of the family remembers that Kennard was a lumberman. He had friends throughout the country, and when they heard he was building a home, "they began sending him select pieces of wood from all over the United States, to be used in his new home..." The house was purchased and restored by Mr. and Mrs. J. A. Bausch recently.
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1967.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
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.