MARTINEZ HOUSE

Hebbronville, Texas

Photo courtesy Liam Weston, December 2018

Martinez House

Completed in 1933, the Spanish land-grant descendants Martinez family donated their adjacent property for the town's plaza and nearby SCOTUS College which was a Franciscan seminary and church while constructing their own mansion.

The Martinez House is an excellently preserved example of Spanish Colonial Revival architecture pre-WWll. Built prior to air conditioning, every bedroom has access to a large shaded sleeping porches and few windows in this mansion are touched by direct sunlight. Ceilings are all 10' high throughout and the underlying structure is made of I-beam steel, supported by handmade bricks filled with stones and sand. Porch and floor areas are made of metal mesh with concrete. The home also has a complete and originally finished basement which is unusual in this area of Texas.

The roofing tiles are original Loduwici Spanish tiles made in Ohio mostly for large public buildings of the time. Every downstairs floor is made of encaustic tiles imported from Europe each with its own custom design for the particular room theme.

Photo courtesy Liam Weston, December 2018

Unlike most Spanish Colonial arches in South Texas and Mexico, the Martinez House was built by expert masons with decorative brick in full sight and no stucco to cover errors in the arch supports. The cast stone balustrades are Roman if not colonial influenced design while the cast stone pillars supporting the arches have a unique twisting fluted column topped by Greek Corinthian decorative leaf tops. The Corinthian order is the most ornate of the Greek orders, characterized by a slender fluted column having an ornate capital decorated with two rows of acanthus leaves and four scrolls.

Having remained in the Martinez family for three generations, the Martinez House is undergoing extensive restoration by an outside investor who acquired the property earlier this year.

- Liam Weston, December, 2018