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The Theater Barn was originally a hay barn built by the Wagner family in the 1890s from timbers derived from the cotton gin on the property. In the 1960s, Miss Ima Hogg converted the hay barn into a theater for plays and concerts. The original sides were extended with vented panels, the loft was partially removed to make room for theater balconies, and a two-tiered stage was built to accommodate dramatic productions. Over the years, many different types of performances have been held in the Theater Barn, the most notable of which is The University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts' Shakespeare at Winedale program, which began in 1970.

Shakespeare students from The University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts' Shakespeare at Winedale program

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The Theater Barn is a renovated and rebuilt hay barn adapted for use as an auditorium and stage to host theatrical and musical productions. The hay barn was constructed in the 1880s from cedar beams salvaged from an animal-powered cotton gin dating from the 1850s which stood on the Lewis farmstead.

Theater Barn

Winedale is one of the signature and research collections at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Winedale collects, preserves, and makes available for study important examples of nineteenth-century Texas architecture and decorative arts. Conceived by Houston philanthropist Miss Ima Hogg as a laboratory for university students to explore a variety of disciplines, Winedale represents the critical importance of preserving the built environment and material culture in the investigation of our past. In the early 1960s, Miss Ima Hogg sought to acquire a historic structure where she could display her growing collection of Texas handcrafted furniture. She learned of the Lewis-Wagner House from her friend and fellow preservationist Hazel Ledbetter. After purchasing the house from Mrs. Ledbetter, she partnered with architecture professor Wayne Bell of the University of Texas to restore the structure and its decorative wall an ceiling paintings. Over the next few years, Miss Ima rescued several other buildings and relocated them to the land she had purchased around the Lewis-Wagner farmstead to form a historical complex. In 1956. Miss Hogg gifted the property to the University of Texas at Austin. Miss Hogg was a national leader in historic preservation. Her methods set the standards for many early preservation policies. The Winedale site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a designated State Antiquities Landmark. The Lewis-Wagner House is a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark. Winedale's value as a historic site and research collection, and its illustration of the development of the preservation profession.

The Winedale Historical Complex, a division of UT Austin's Briscoe Center, is a collection of nineteenth-century structures and their period furnishings situated on 225 acres in northern Fayette County. Winedale's collections offer a tangible link to the Texas past, capturing the evidence of history through architecture, furnishings, and decorative arts.

The Spies house, now the Winedale Visitor Center, was built by Alfred Wagner (1891-195) around 1930 for Adam and Christina Spies, the parents of his wife, Lina, and his sister-in-law, Leona. The house was originally located near the Winedale general store until Miss Ima Hogg had it moved to its present location. While part of the National Register's Winedale Historic District, the Spies House is considered a non-contributing building due to its lack of architectural or historical significance. As such, Miss Hogg chose to remodel the house by adding a side porch and a second floor with four dormers, adding considerable charm to the building. Such alterations would not be appropriate on a building designated as historically significant. For many years, it served as the caretaker's cottage until it became the Winedale Visitor Center in 1970s.  The pollinator garden in front of the house was created by the Gideon Lincecum Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists in 2017.

The Spies house, now the Winedale Visitor Center, was built by Alfred Wagner (1891-195) around 1930 for Adam and Christina Spies, the parents of his wife, Lina, and his sister-in-law, Leona. It now functions as the Visitor Center.

The pollinator garden in front of the house was created by the Gideon Lincecum Chapter of the Texas Master Naturalists in 2017. 

Winedale Visitor Center

This house was built in the mid-1800s on Jack's' Creek about two miles south of Winedale on land that was originally part of the old Nassau far, which served as the headquarters of the German Emigration Company in the 1830s and 1840s. Due to their efforts Round Top became a largely German community by the 1860s. The structure is now named for Hazel Ledbetter, who presented it to Miss Ima Hogg's Winedale project in 1965. Hazel's Lone Oak Cottage has been authentically restored to the simple architectural beauty of a dogtrot style common to the home of an early German Texan settler in the mid-nineteenth century.  The two front rooms of the cottage feature the "Winedale Story" exhibit with the history of the region and community and how Miss Hogg fulfilled her vision assembling representative structures into a historical complex to serve as a teaching laboratory for students.

This house was built in the mid-1800s on Jack's' Creek about two miles south of Winedale on land that was originally part of the old Nassau farm, which served as the headquarters of the German Emigration Company in the 1830s and 1840s. Due to their efforts Round Top became a largely German community by the 1860s. The structure is now named for Hazel Ledbetter, who presented it to Miss Ima Hogg's Winedale project in 1965. Hazel's Lone Oak Cottage has been authentically restored to the simple architectural beauty of a dogtrot style common to the home of an early German Texan settler in the mid-nineteenth century. 

The two front rooms of the cottage feature the "Winedale Story" exhibit with the history of the region and community and how Miss Hogg fulfilled her vision assembling representative structures into a historical complex to serve as a teaching laboratory for students.

Hazel's Lone Oak Cottage

William Townsend was an early settler who received a Mexican land grant in the Austin Colony in 1831 at the present sit of Winedale. Following his marriage in 1834, Townsend built a large room with a fireplace and a sleeping loft. This structure was built entirely by hand. Samuel K. Lewis purchased the Townsend property in 1848 and developed it into a large cotton plantation worked by 13 enslaved people. Lewis expanded the original structure, which is located in the left section of the house, turning the loft into a full second story and adding an identical section to the right with a breezeway between the two sections. Across the front, he added the first- and second-story porches with cedar pillars. Lewis’s house and the nearby Transverse Crib Barn are the only buildings today that occupy their original sites. In the mid-1850s, Lewis lobbied for a public road to pass in front of the house, which served as a stagecoach stopping place between the two towns of Brenham and La Grange. The Winedale community relocated to cluster around this stop. Lewis died in 1867, but his heirs retained the house until 1882, when it was purchased by Joseph G. Wagner, a cobbler from Breslau, Silesia (modern day Wroctaw, Poland). Through the first half of the twentieth century, the Wagners farmed their land alongside several Black tenant families and ran a number of local businesses, including a cotton gin, feed and grist mills, tin shop, Blacksmith shop, a general store, and a saloon that became a favorite Winedale gathering place. Today, the Lee Wagner House, the store, and the gas station, seen across the highway from the Lewis-Wagner House, are used ass workshops and storage facilities. By the late 1950s, local agriculture and the businesses that served it had waned. The Wagner family sold the property in 1961 to preservationist Hazel Ledbetter, who showed it to her friend Ima Hogg. Captivated by the decorative paintings of Rudolph Melchoir on the interior, Miss Ima decided to buy the house with the initial thought of relocating it to Bayou Bend, her home and future site of the decorative arts gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. When that proved impossible, she set out to restore the house as a showplace for the nineteenth-century Texas handcrafted furniture and crafts she had been collecting. Ongoing preservation of the Lewis-Wagner House is supported in part by the Alfred Jr. and Rub D. Wagner Endowment. The Lewis-Wagner House exhibits German architectural features with the window details and woodwork. The columns on the side of the house were painted to give the effect that they had been beveled. Visitors can see the internal structure of the porch by looking up at the ceiling by the right column of the front porch. The Lewis-Wagner House features a dogtrot: a breezeway between the two sides of the house that provides shad and can be closed off with doors. Dogtrot houses were common in Texas during the middle of the nineteenth century.

The Lewis-Wagner House is the centerpiece of Winedale. The house is a two-story frame house of eight rooms, with two rooms on each side of the breezeway on both floors and a galleried porch across the front. The frame, siding, and floors are all made of cedar but locally. The structure has been restored to its mid 19th-century appearance, when it was occupied by the Samuel K. Lewis family.

Lewis-Wagner House

The Koneschik Log Kitchen was originally a house built in about 1875 on land between Industry and Shelby in Austin County, about 10 miles from present-day Winedale. It is a single-pen Post Oak log structure that represents the twilight of log cabin construction in the late 1800s. Miss Ima Hogg purchased the cabin from the Giese family in 1966 and relocated it to Winedale to serve as a demonstration kitchen for the Lewis-Wagner House. The present smokehouse is a typical single-room log building of the mid-nineteenth-century Texas. It was the home of German immigrant August Boecker in 1866. The cabin was located near the Welcome community in Austin County, about 14.5 miles from present-day Winedale. The Bybees purchased the cabin from the Giese family in 1966 and donated it to Winedale, where it was rehabilitated to represent the Lewis-Wagner farmstead's lost smokehouse. Both structures feature half dovetail notches formed by interlocking pieces. Half dovetails are more common historically and have the advantage of draining water better than a full dovetail notch since the angle allows water to flow away from the structure.

The kitchen and smokehouse are located behind the Lewis-Wagner House and were added during restoration of the main residence. Both log structures were moved onto the site of the original kitchen buildings and were restored as a kitchen and smokehouse. Both structures feature half dovetail notches formed by interlocking pieces. 


Koneschik Log Kitchen and Boecker Smokehouse

The Lewis family built this ban sometime prior to 1869. Constructed of entirely hand-hewn timber, the barn is one of the last remaining structures of its kind in Texas. Two pairs of cribs separated by aisles under one roof create four areas for storing corn, cotton seeds, and other products. The far corners of the barn were originally used for Blacksmithing and cabinet-making. It is a versatile structure that is accessible from all four sides. Samuel Lewis, who owned the nearby Lewis-Wagner house, used this structure of part of his plantation. It was later used by Wagner family to store corn, hay, and other agricultural products.

The Transverse crib barn, or four-square barn, consists of four cribs joined by a framework with distended facades and gabled ends. The structure is located on its original site and is one of the few such barns still in existence in Texas. Constructed sometime prior to 1867 entirely of hand-hewn timber, the barn was designated to store corn in the cribs, hay above, and animals and equipment inside. 

Transverse Crib Barn

Built in the 1830s by Joseph Biegel, Fayette County’s first German settler, this cabin is a log construction with full-dovetail cornering. Donated to Winedale by the John Schumacher family in 1976, the house was removed from the old Biegel Settlement near Halsted in the Fayette County before the area was flooded by what is now Cedar Creek Reservoir. It now serves as a residence for visiting scholars. The Ragsdale Foundation, with additional contributions from Dr. Michael and Judy Koehl, has established an endowment to help support ongoing preservation of the Biegel House. Gifts to the endowment are always welcome.

The Biegel House is a frame structure built of cedar logs up to twenty feet long, covered later with boards. This rear example of full dovetail cornering log construction was recorded as a Texas Historical Landmark in 1965. The house was originally located on land granted by the Mexican government in 1832 to German settler Joseph Biegel. Biegel and his fellow landowners were part of Fayette County’s first German settlement, an agricultural community of German, Swiss and Alsatian families.

Joseph Biegel House

Naturalist Gideon Lincecum (1793-1874) brought his knowledge of Choctaw herbal healing from Mississippi to Long Point, just a few miles from Winedale, in 1848. He collected hundreds of plants in Central Texas and wrote extensive commentaries on their medicinal qualities. The Gideon Lincecum Arboretum was originally created in the late 1970s with markers for native plants, trees, and grasses. IN 2017, the Gideon Lincecum Mater Naturalists revived the trail on a smaller scale and relocated the marker to a more accessible area. As part of the Blackland Prairie and Post Oak Savannah ecosystems of Texas, the trail provides access to native grasses, wildflowers, tree, and pollinator bushes leading to a natural pond where bald cypress and dragonflies abound.

The Gideon Lincecum Arboretum was originally created in the late 1970s with markers for native plants, trees, and grasses. IN 2017, the Gideon Lincecum Mater Naturalists revived the trail on a smaller scale and relocated the marker to a more accessible area. As part of the Blackland Prairie and Post Oak Savannah ecosystems of Texas, the trail provides access to native grasses, wildflowers, tree, and pollinator bushes leading to a natural pond where bald cypress and dragonflies abound.

Gideon Lincecum Nature Trail

This vernacular Greek Revival farmhouse was built in 1861 by Gregor Carmichael McGregor, a doctor and land speculator who came to Texas and married Annie Portia Fordtran, daughter of wealthy German immigrants. Featuring a simple floor plan with a central passageway and rooms on either side, this style was common across the nation between 1820 and 1840. The house was divided sharply into formal and informal spaces typical of upper-class houses in the mid-nineteenth century. The formal rooms, including the entrance hall, parlor, and dining room, were richly decorated and furnished to entertain guests and used for special occasions, while the informal rooms were modes for daily life. It was difficult to obtain fine building materials in Central Texas, so the house was made entirely of native wood and featured faux painted details on the exterior and interior to replicate expensive materials. The pine front doors were accented with painted wood graining to resemble oak with rosewood paneling. The chimney bricks were made of stone then plastered and stenciled over with a red brick pattern. The entrance hall was decorated with columns painted on the walls, and the wood fireplace mantels were painted to look like marble. Additionally, some rooms feature painted ceiling and decorative borders by Rudolph Melchoir. The family occupied the house until l1873 when dr. McGregor retired from his medical practice and they moved near Waco, Texas. The town of McGregor was named after him when he donated some of his land to create a railroad right-of-way. Dr. McGregor sold the house to Mary Schloeman. In 1912, the property was sold again to Charles Grimm, serving as a tenant house until Miss ima Hogg acquired it in 1968. Originally situated in the Wesley community, Miss Hogg moved the house to Winedale and furnished it withTexas German furniture from her collection to illustrate the lifestyle of an affluent German-American family around the Civil War period.

Historic preservationists have called this impressive structure “a work of art.” Stylistically, the McGregor House is a vernacular Greek revival house, typical of an area planter’s home. The two-story structure has a central passageway with a large room on either side and a one-story ell with porch and dining rooms. There are three richly decorated public rooms (the entrance hall, parlor and dining room) and four plainer private rooms (three bedrooms and a family sitting room in the upstairs hall). 

McGregor-Grim House

This board-and-batten structure—referring to the exterior siding that has alternating wide boards and narrow battens—was constructed in 1868 a quarter mile northeast of its present location. It was dedicated in 1869 as the Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church Congregation for the German community. By 1894, the building was utilized as a one-room schoolhouse in addition to hosting church services. In 1943, the Winedale School was consolidated into the Burton Independent school District. After World War II, the building was converted into a hay barn before it was moved to its present location in 1992. Former Winedale School students restored the building and donated it to The University of Texas at Austin in 1994. Its ongoing preservation is supported in part by the Winedale School Endowment established by Mrs. Ruby D. Wagner.

This one-room school was constructed in 1868 about a quarter mile from its present location. The school served the predominately German community as an elementary school and for Lutheran Church services until 1943. In that year consolidation sent Winedale students to the Burton School. The school was moved to its present location in 1992.

Winedale School

The Lauderdale House was built about 1858 by James Shelby Lauderdale (1812-1908) when he settled near Long Point in Washington County, Texas, about 17 miles from present-day Winedale. The house’s imposing pediment porch reflected the filtering of Classical Revival architecture into the area. Philanthropist and antique collector Ima Hogg purchased the house in 1963 and moved it to Winedale before its original location was flooded to create Lake Somerville. The Lauderdale House served as a residence for visiting artists, scholars, and seminar students until lit was destroyed by an electrical fire in 1981. Only its two chimneys are left standing.

The Lauderdale House, an example of a Texas classic revival farmhouse, was built in 1858. It was moved to the Winedale property in the mid 1960s and restored to serve as a guest house for resident scholars. Fire destroyed the house in 1981. Only two of its chimneys are left standing.

Lauderdale Chimneys

Cotton was one of the predominant cash crop dating back to the days of Stephen F. Austin’s colony. The Joseph Wagner family worked the land and ran several local businesses, including a general store, service station, and a Blacksmith shop, during the first half of the twentieth century. The family operated the cotton gin and feed mill from 1928 to 1956. When agriculture and related businesses wanted, the cotton gin and mill were dismantled in 1958 and sold to Central American for continued operation. What remains are the concrete mountings of the Bessemer diesel engine of the cotton gin and feed mill.

Cotton was one of the predominant cash crop dating back to the days of Stephen F. Austin’s colony. The Joseph Wagner family worked the land and ran several local businesses, including a general store, service station, and a Blacksmith shop, during the first half of the twentieth century. The family operated the cotton gin and feed mill from 1928 to 1956. When agriculture and related businesses wanted, the cotton gin and mill were dismantled in 1958 and sold to Central American for continued operation. What remains are the concrete mountings of the Bessemer diesel engine of the cotton gin and feed mill.

Winedale

Theater Barn

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Backstory and Context

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