ARTchitecture
ONE OF A KIND PIECE OF TEXAS HISTORY
From Gunslinging - to Fine Wine Tinging
This magnificent 10,534 sq ft, .997-acre historical mansion began its journey on the Texas frontier in the early 1850’s, the oldest room dates to 1851. It has been a home, a boarding house, a saloon, a polo club, a shooting club, a brothel in the 1870’s, a gathering place, or a hotel for 175 years.
The building was fully rebuilt & restored by meticulous craftsmen over a 7-year period from 2005 – 2012.
The property has all new electric, all new plumbing, new foundation and a commercial level HVAC system that leaves zero space with drafty or stale air, like you get in a lot of old places. Each room has a control panel.
We basically disassembled the whole place and redid all the electrical, and plumbing, the foundation plus replaced all the bad or weak wood, restored all the good wood, then reassembled it.
The 10,534 square foot main house includes beautiful limestone walls and long leaf yellow pine (now extinct) ceilings and floors.
The Manor comes with a fascinating 19th century legend that says, and it’s backed up by historians & old newspaper articles: The first polo game played in the US was played just outside Boerne on a wealthy Englishman’s ranch, and the “clubhouse” where the team partied & lived was Phillip Manor.
See world renown polo historian Horace Laffaye’s book “Polo In The United States”. It talks about the first match possibly being played in Boerne.
Long story short, the mansion is in the historical running to be the oldest polo club clubhouse in the US that is still in existence! Plus, it was the original home to one of the oldest shooting clubs in America. The Boerne Shooting Club/Boerne Schutzen Verein, founded by German settlers in 1864.
A famous shooting club member was Adolph Toepperwein. He was one of the world’s best marksman and show shooters. There is a Texas historical sign out front of The Manor about Toepperwein.
The Phillips family who first owned the property were pioneers in The Texas Hill country, they moved to what is now Boerne in 1847. They got a title deed to the property in 1867. However, documents talk about the shooting club and renting rooms at the Manor/Phillip House in 1861 -1864. The rented rooms were for workers building the new church next door. The church construction was delayed until after The Civil War and finished in 1867.
Our/The Manor’s neighbor since 1867 is that church, St. Peters Catholic Church.
The church was saved from being demolished in the landmark US Supreme Court case Boerne vs Flores.
When you are on the balconies or in the courtyard and garden of The Manor you can clearly hear the church bells chime at the top of every hour until 8:00 pm. It’s a very cool vibe in the hidden garden of Phillip Manor.
We call The Manor ARTchitecture. It’s beautiful and has kept its almost 2 full centuries of patina.
Look at the wall boards in the photos. Those colors date back to the beginnings. Each board had layers of paint that we sanded individually after disassembly. When we put them back up after 7 years, the patina was/is beautiful and created a rich historic texture to the whole place.
The Manor has 11’ ceilings throughout, except for the kitchen, it has a drop ceiling. We originally planned for a restaurant kitchen but fell in love with the place as a house and decided against making it a restaurant.
We repurposed the long leaf yellow pine floor joists and created vanities, wainscot paneling, and trim. The bar has a lot of long leaf pine in it, plus a perfect fireplace for cold winter days and nights. The bar has been a bar since the early 1870’s. See the old pics. The photo showing the old bar is the black & white one that has a sign above the outside doorway that says BEER SALOON with people and a dog out front. It was taken in 1871.
The Manor also has a top-drawer man cave/boudoir/wine cellar/spare room/966 sq ft limestone walled basement with a diamond polished small aggregate concrete floor. It’s a super cool space. It has the year 1873 carved into the stone wall. It also has large and very old cedar pillars & roof beams, plus a huge fireplace that we never lit. The bar is above the basement and was built in the early 1870’s, so the carved date in the stone is the right provenance.
The property was sold outside the Phillips family on a note in 1925 to a guy named Major who spent a “major” fortune fixing it up. Major added the large winding staircase in the entry, plus constructed the second building in 1927. He called the manor The Cibolo. He defaulted on the loan during the depression and the banker repossessed it. The banker was in the Phillips family by marriage, so the Phillips family got the Manor back in 1934 all fixed up and for free.
The Phillips, other than the 8 years, kept the Manor in the family for almost 100 years before it was finally sold outright in 1946.
Fast forward 60 years of dilapidation and cosmetic repairs, plus several owners, to 2005 when a group of skilled craftsmen started the 7-year complete restoration/rebuild of the magnificent old Manor.
The Manor also has a fire suppressant system throughout, including sprinklers on the balconies.
There are 2 occupiable buildings on the .997-acre property, and it has a 9,800 square foot loose granite driveway and parking area with an ancient Texas Hill Country oak tree for shade. The entire property except for the driveway and the front of the office/apartment is surrounded by a limestone wall.
The main building has 5 bedrooms, all upstairs, with ensuite bathrooms, including a detached second story 1-bedroom apartment with kitchen and steam shower. The apartment has 2 big, covered balconies and they are roomy enough for couches. There are 7 bathrooms in total. 5 of the bathrooms have showers, and 2 of them also have claw foot style bathtubs. Plus 2, including apartment have steam showers.
The Manor has an indoor-outdoor sound system, the music is in the courtyard, the beer garden, and all the downstairs area including the kitchen.
The garden, courtyard and separate beer garden areas are huge. In the courtyard we’ve had live music from local artists to names you would recognize, to dancers from Rwanda, Jazz bands, art shows, and weddings. There is also a limestone smokehouse/storage building in the courtyard that was built in the 1850’s. It has gun slits for windows. It was originally a safe house from Indian raids in the 1850’s and 1860’s. It still has a lot of square nails in it for hanging items.
There is a koi pond just outside the sunroom and the big room with ten 8’ x 5’ windows. The view is like looking at a Monet painting but with more defined detail 😊
The large windows are beautiful at night, they clearly reflect the interior limestone walls, lights and art. The view mixed with all the reflections and adjacent sunroom with its floor to ceiling windows and art, gives an ambience of being in a transparent 4th dimensional art gallery.
The kitchen is massive, with a commercial design. It has rubber covered floors with rubber covering going 4 feet up the wall. The kitchen has 3 sinks, floor drains, a drain to an underground grease pit, a restaurant quality stainless steel dishwasher system, stainless prep tables, a stainless commercial oven, and a large stainless 3 glass door refrigerator.
The second building/office/loft apartment has 1,110 square feet, was built in 1927, has a loft room for office or sleeping, has a separate office, no stove or oven, and has a bathroom & shower. Plus, long leaf yellow pine floors & ceilings. It also has rubber floors in the downstairs kitchen area and bathroom.
Total 11,644 square feet with both buildings.
There is also 1,774 square feet of covered porch area.
The property is zoned commercial and residential.
It is also ADA certified.
