Comfort

Hill Country Trail Region
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TREUE DER UNION

This Hill Country community is like a time capsule of Central Texas German immigrant history. In 1852, a group of German “freethinkers” settled along the banks of Cypress Creek above its confluence with the Guadalupe River. Comfort was platted in 1854, and most of the downtown is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. More than 100 structures date from the 19th to the early 20th centuries, and some properties have remained in the same families for generations. Many of the buildings display fachwerk, a German building technique consisting of heavy timber framing and diagonal bracing with infill of limestone.

Some historic structures have been adapted to new uses. The Comfort Public Library is housed in a 1916 former mercantile establishment designed by architect L. Harrington and built by stonemason Otto Bartel with detailed craftsmanship. The Comfort Heritage Foundation is headquartered in the Old Historic Comfort State Bank Building, a 1907 structure with polished red granite columns, arched windows and a corner entrance. The Comfort Commons (formerly Ingenhuett-Faust Hotel) is now called Hotel Giles after famed architect Alfred Giles who designed it in the late 19th Century. Giles also designed the 1908 former U.S. Post Office and the 1879 Faltin and Co. mercantile business.

The oldest Civil War marker in Texas, the Treue der Union monument, designates the final resting place of 36 Union sympathizers, mostly German immigrants from Comfort. Some of the men were killed by Confederate forces at the Battle of Nueces in 1862; others in subsequent clashes. The sympathizers were trying to make their way to Mexico to join Union forces. The limestone obelisk is inscribed with the names of the deceased and was dedicated in 1866.

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