12/04/1969
Demolition of El Paso's first frame structure at 906 North Stanton street is now nearly complete, but it remains intact in the memory of Mrs. Kate
Krause Ball to whom the structure was not just a house but a home.
Built in 1882 by Ernest Ulrich Krause, her father, the house was crafted with great attention to detail. Mrs. Ball, now in her seventies, remembers
well her place of birth and the shelter of her youth.
07/07/1958
MARSHALL HAIL
Ernest W. Krause was accosted one day in 1882: by a passerby who asked, "What fool built this house way up here north of town?"
"I did," replied Mr. Krause.
“Well, don’t you know it will be washed away by the first flood from Mt. Franklin?”
“No. But you people down there will be washed out by floods from the Rio Grande.”
This colloquy took place near the first residence built north of the railroad tracks in pioneer El Paso.
It was the first house in El Paso not built of adobe.
Little Change
The house still stands “way out” at 906 North Stanton street, just off Montana. It is pretty much the same now as it was in 1882. Mrs. Charles C. Montfort, Mr. Krause’s daughter, has tried to preserve its original features.
Both Mrs. Montfort and her sister, Mrs. Kate Krause Ball, El Paso artist, believe the old house should be kept as an example of the town’s earlier architecture.
Mrs. Ball recently suggested, in a letter to president Jack Vowell Jr., of the El Paso Historical Society, that a way be found to preserve the house “after we are gone.”
Mr. Vowell and Society directors agree.
Builder Krause, incidentally, was prophetic. His house was never washed away, whereas El Paso below the tracks was swept by devastating floods until the Rio Grande was harnessed.
Built for Bride
The old Krause house has many interesting futures, not the least of which was the way it came to be built. Mr. Krause constructed it because his fiancée had vowed she wouldn’t wed any man unless he had a home for her.
Ernest Krause, a native of Germany, was a roamer. He left home at 17. For five years he circled the world as a merchant seaman, but made it a point to ship on British and American vessels. He learned English but never lost his accent.
Finally he tired of wandering, came to the U.S., and settled in Arkansas as a cabinet maker. He drifted down to Gonzales, near San Antonio, where he met Miss Flora Beach, his future wife. Foreseeing a boom for El Paso, he decided to move here with Mrs. Krause-to-be.
The girl said she was going nowhere and marrying nobody until a home awaited her. So Krause came to El Paso by stagecoach in 1881 and built the house “upon the mesa,” returned to Gonzalez, married Miss Beach, and then escorted her to her El Paso domicile.
Mr. Krause got into contracting, then specialized as an architect.
Original Floor in Use
He built his El Paso home of the best materials. It was a frame house, fashioned of redwood, the first redwood lumber shipped from California. It was a story and a half, had seven gables, bay windows, excellent workmanship and furnishings, and was a showplace. Mr. Krause did much of the work himself.
The front hall has an expensive door of etched and stained glass.
The stairway to the second floor is walnut and circles three sides of the hall, attached to the wall without supports underneath.
The circling stairway, an architectural achievement, has a twisting handrail that was shaped, caved and polished by specialists brought from St. Louis.
The parlor has a mantel of birds-eye maple, opposite a bay window with a ceiling in sunburst design fashioned by Mr. Krause.
The floor today is the original wide board flooring. Woodwork has the original enamel finish one-eight of an inch thick. A tall mirror with a marble base reaches almost to the ceiling.
A fisher piano, built for El Paso’s dry climate, is still in possession of the family though not now at the house. Old lighting fixtures, with a handsome brass dome set with jewel-like glass ornaments, were used.
Next to the parlor is a “sitting room” with wainscoted walls that conceal a small secret closet. Mr. Krause applied the wood grain by hand. A shelf built for books and plants also held a kerosene lamp.
“A chromium plated rail around the pot-bellied stove was wonderful to rest the feet on,” Mrs. Ball recalled.
Just off the sitting room was a small greenhouse which was moist and fragrant with geraniums, oxalis and dew plants.
Used as dance Floor
The dining room was added in 1899 and was large enough for a family of 13 and some guest besides. Mrs. Montfort said the dining room, with its smooth floor of edged pine, was added mainly to proved a dance floor for the three Krause daughters and their friends.
The kitchen originally stretched across the full width of the house. It had a large pantry and a wood stove on which Mrs. Krause cooked delicious bread and biscuits. It is now used as an extra bedroom and bath.
Outside the kitchen were fig trees and a grape arbor. One of the fig trees still bears fruit. A willow tree and a rose bush, each 50 years old, still live. A barn for a horse and buggy with a hayloft occupied one corner of the site, where a garage is now.
Was the house eventually demolished? A search of the address on Google maps shows it as a parking lot.
Posted by: Christine | August 02, 2011 at 02:41 PM
Went back and read the beginning of the article - yes the house was demolished in 1969. Very sad, it sounded like a lovely home and should have been preserved.
Posted by: Christine | August 02, 2011 at 02:44 PM