Schulze, Walter, House and Industrial Structure
102 Chicon St., Austin, TXThe history of improvements located at 102 Chicon is unclear and indefinite prior to the construction of the Walter Schulze House. Originally part of the Government Tract adjoining the City of Austin, the property was owned by Amelia and G. M. Brass by the 1880s. By 1884, when they sold a portion of Block 3, Outlot 22, to the American Powder Mills of Boston, Massachusetts, the purchase price suggests that there were no improvements. However, when the property appeared as part of the T. Burns Subdivision in 1890, the one-room brick building presently located north of the Walter Schulze House clearly was already present. Notations on the Burns Plat suggest that the tract was used by Tipps,[sic] and Brass, dealers in hardware, but no other records seem to exist which might assist in ascribing a construction date, builder, or user of the building during the 1890s.
In 1902, the American Powder Mills Company sold the tract to W. R. Schulze, at that time a driver with the San Antonio Brewing Association, an organization whose stone building still stands at 815 East 4th Street. Four years later, Schulze had a new residence constructed at 102 Chicon, and he moved to that location. He and his wife subsequently lived in the house until 1944 and 1956, respectively; in 1956 the property was left to the present owner, a niece. In the intervening time, the Schulzes amassed a large amount of real estate, most of it in East Austin, and ran a well-known neighborhood business at property on East 1st Street adjacent to their home. For more than 40 years, the Schulze business was a convenient store for local residents interested in purchasing groceries, beer, feed, cigars, wood, and charcoal, or who wished to have shoes repaired or hair cut.
The combined buildings at 102 Chicon are significant for their associations with a well-known East Austin businessman. They also are significant because the residence is an excellent example of a late Victorian, wood-frame, vernacular building which has stood relatively intact since its construction ca, 1906; and because the attached brick building is a pristine example of a nineteenth-century industrial structure.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1986.
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.