Houston Turner Hall

The Houston Turnverein, a German gymnastic and social society, came to own the downtown block bounded by Caroline, Austin, Prairie and Texas, and its Turner Hall at the corner of Prairie and Caroline was for decades a center of German social life in the city. Ten young German men founded the society on January 14, 1854, in the house of Peter Gabel on Preston between San Jacinto and Caroline. Gabel was a cooper whose brewery on the same block is counted as Houston's first commercial brewery, perhaps begun as early as 1849. The founders pledged themselves to physical and mental exercise and to liberal principles, and its members at once formed a volunteer fire company, which served from 1854 to 1860. After the Bracken House fire of May 20, 1854, Mayor N. Fuller thanked them with two dozen bottles of ale and porter.

With more than 50 members in 1856, the society bought a lot on Caroline between Prairie and Texas, with a small house for meetings. Its first Turner Hall, on the Prairie corner, was dedicated on February 5, 1861, on the eve of secession, with the United States flag draped in mourning. Members had formed a drill company, the Turner Rifles, in 1859, and in 1861 the society raised a volunteer company for the Confederacy under Capt. E. B. H. Schneider. The hall burned on March 18, 1870, and a larger one was begun in March 1871. Houston's first Volksfest was staged in 1869, and it was held every year until 1897.

In 1911 the society sold the Texas Avenue half of the block for $168,000 and built a four-story hall at Austin and Prairie to plans by Sanguinet, Staats and Barnes. It sold that building in 1928 and moved to a clubhouse on Almeda Road designed by Joseph Finger, which was demolished in 1993.