One of the most delightful historic homes in Seguin is the Dietz-Castilla Dollhouse built in 1910 by Louis Dietz, a German immigrant carpenter who built the house for his five-year-old adopted daughter who arrived in Seguin on an orphan train. Many years later Pablo Castilla, a successful Hispanic immigrant entrepreneur, purchased the Victorian playhouse and in 1967 donated the sweet little house to the Seguin Conservation Society. Dietz and Castilla were friends and associates for many years.
What little girl wouldn't love playing in her own special dollhouse? This photo was taken through on a window of the house.
Seguin was once known as the Concrete City for constructing many buildings out of one of the first forms of concrete using limestone. The Zorn house (aka Sebastopol), a Greek Revival private home constructed in 1856, is considered one of the country's best preserved examples of 19th century experimentation with concrete construction. I drove by the house to take a photo and noticed a sign that said a tour would be starting at 9 a.m. It was 9:05 but I decided to see if I could join the tour when I discovered I was the first visitor of the day so I received a private tour by a very knowledgeable and informed gentleman. I wished I could have stayed in Seguin longer because I had the most fun in that little city of the entire trip. But I had to be on my way because the second day was the longest with the most stops.
11 comments:
What a sweet and quite elaborate play house. Love the composition of the second photo.
adorable dollhouse!
I love both of these houses, big and little and the walls in the doll house are like my grandmothers walls. her house was similar to the doll house, but bigger and was built in 1920. i would have loved a private tour.
What a very cute little house! Louis Dietz was a true artist.
What little boy wouldn't love the 'dollhouse'. Course, we'd have to get some sort of pulley system together to get it up a huge tree. Makin' treehouses. It's a guy thing. Great pictures to showoff this town.
Oh how I would have loved that doll house when I was a child.
I never saw that adorable playhouse the times I went to Seguin. My husband built one for my daughters, not quite this fancy but really cute. I posted a picture way back in AOL Journals. Now I don't know where the picture is.
What a sweet playhouse for a very lucky girl!
What a cute adorable house.
It's wonderful that the doll house has been preserved. Little girls don't stay 5 very long!
How darling that the German immigrant built this beautiful playhouse for his adopted daughter! She must have been delighted after going through all she had up to that point in her life. Incredibly sweet story! I love the little house. And I never thought of this, but I have a brother-in-law named Dietz, and he is a very talented woodworker. Perhaps his ancestors were woodworkers, too. Your personal tour sounds great too...I bet the concrete constructed house was very interesting.
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