Curious about New Braunfels’ oldest stone home?

Historical overview

This 1868 limestone beauty later became the home and office of Dr. A.J. Hinman, the town doctor who patched people up, served as school board president, helped found the New Braunfels Rotary Club, and became the first president of the New Braunfels Hospital. His family even owned Hinman Island, the leafy little stretch that is now part of Landa Park. After the doctor’s chapter closed, the house passed to First National Bank, then Chase, who gifted it to the Braunfels Foundation Trust. For years it hummed with students through Communities in Schools. Today it welcomes you as a visitor center.

150 years of stories behind its limestone walls. Come by, learn the history, and see it with your own eyes

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Hinman house family tree

Hinman family history

The New Braunfels Visitor Center is currently housed in the city’s oldest stone home, the historic Hinman House. For more than 150 years, this landmark has stood as a quiet witness to the German immigrant story that shaped New Braunfels.

In December 1844, Peter Arnold arrived on the ship Ferdinand with the German Emigration Company. By March 1845 he was among the original settlers of New Braunfels, drawing Town Lot No. 76 on what is now South Castell Avenue. A blacksmith by trade, Arnold built a log house and blacksmith shop on the property. In 1855 he sold the lot to Heinrich Hinmann, a fellow blacksmith from Lower Saxony, Germany, for $550.

Heinrich and his wife, Therese (née Sickold), whom he married the following year, raised ten children in the home. Eight of those children survived to adulthood. In 1868 the family replaced the earlier log dwelling with the substantial two-story limestone house that still stands today. Built with traditional German methods, the structure features 20-inch-thick walls of locally cut limestone and was originally heated by wood-burning stoves.

After Heinrich’s death in 1899, the house passed to the next generation. His grandson, Dr. Alexander J. Hinman (who dropped the second “n” from the family name), moved in with his parents and siblings. A respected physician who treated patients from the home, Alexander became a leading civic figure: the first president of the New Braunfels Independent School District school board, a founding member of the local Rotary Club, and the first president of New Braunfels Hospital. The family also owned Hinman Island, now part of Landa Park. Family friends later recalled the house as a lively place of frequent overnight visits that often kept the doctor up late.

Today the Hinman House continues to welcome the community, serving as a living link between New Braunfels’ German pioneer roots and its present.

Public occupancy

After the Hinman family’s long presence in the home ended, the property was later purchased by First National Bank (later acquired by Chase Bank). The bank originally planned to convert the building into a motor bank facility. In a last-minute preservation effort, however, First National Bank selected a different location for the motor bank, allowing the historic Hinman House to be saved.

In 1999, Chase Bank gifted the home to the Braunfels Foundation Trust. The house was officially designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 2009.

During this period, as many local residents remember, the building was rented out to Comal ISD.

Now the visitor center is happy to call this beautiful building home

Historical October fun!

Occupants over the years have reported strange little moments… a flicker of someone standing just at the edge of their vision, lost keys or papers that somehow reappear right where they were looking only minutes earlier.

Some say it is the good doctor still making his rounds, checking on patients who never quite left. Others insist it is simply the friendly Hinman children, still having a quiet laugh at the living.

So if you plan to visit us after dark this October, do not be surprised if our extra guests decide to welcome you themselves.

And long before the whispers began, the old house knew how to throw a party. In the early 1970s it hosted Gartenfest, a lively fundraiser put on by the Conservation Society during Wurstfest. German food filled the rooms, music spilled onto the porch, rummage tables lined the halls, and the tradition of steaming bowls of Kartoffelsuppe was born right here inside these thick limestone walls.

The house has always known how to keep company… both the living and the ones who never fully moved out.

If you're continually curious about New Braunfels history or intrigued by the Hinman House, learn more at the Sophienburg Museum & Archives

Hinman house history

Historical overview