Master Builder of the Lower Rio Grande: Heinrich Portscheller by W. Eugene George (review)

W. Eugene George first discovered the work of Heinrich Portscheller in Roma, Texas, in 1961, and with his students documented much of what was identified and remained of Portscheller’s work. This work, along with the Silverio de la Peña Drugstore and Post Office in neighboring Rio Grande City, was photographed and recorded with measured drawings for inclusion in the Historic American Building Survey at the Library of Congress, and it remains accessible to the public through its website.

Portscheller was born in 1843 in Hornbach in the German Palatinate, one of five sons of Johannes Portscheller, a master mason descended from a long line of German baumeisters. While four of his sons also took upthis profession, Heinrich was the only one to emigrate, leaving Germany in 1865 for Veracruz, Mexico, where he was conscripted into the army of Emperor Maximillian I. Sent to the northeast state of Tamaulipas, he deserted in 1866, but little is known of his activities until 1879, when he married Leonarda Campos and moved to Mier, Mexico, near her family ranch on the Rio Grande River. Eugene George and Stephen Fox surmise that during this period Portscheller was employed on the construction of the Ringgold Barracks near Rio Grande City. By the early 1880s he had become a prominent builder across the river in Roma, where he had also established a brickyard. Addressing himself as Enrique, he was soon erecting handsome brick buildings for the elite Hispanic families in this prosperous trading center.

During the latter 19th century, Roma, which lies midway between Brownsville and Laredo, was located at the head of navigation on the Rio Grande River, and served as an important nexus of trade (legal and illegal) between the American north and Mexican cities such as Monterrey and Matamoras. In 1881 the railroad arrived in Laredo, and by the end of the century river navigation became more difficult as the railroad siphoned off business from Roma and its neighbors. In 1894 Portscheller moved to this new center of commerce, but little is known about his work between this date and his death there in 1915.

While Fox observes that it would be an exaggeration to overemphasize the influence of George’s work on subsequent border scholarship, it “nonetheless stands out as prescient” (86). His pioneering effort to preserve this legacy continues to this day. In 1993 much of central Roma was designated as a National Historic Landmark district, and this now forms the anchor for the Lower Rio Grande Heritage Corridor.

If George contributed to Portscheller’s resurrection, Fox, in his essay, places the builder within the complex interplay of Mexican, American, and European building traditions that arose in this region during the late 18th and 19th centuries. His extensive and meticulous documentation of Rio Grande builders and architects will serve as a foundation for years of future scholarship in this area. While the lower Rio Grande snakes along the southern edge of the American Plains, Fox’s equally impressive survey of borderland scholarship will also become an essential resource for anyone interested in the Texas-Mexican borderland, and also for scholars exploring the subsequent expansion of Hispanic culture north across the Great Plains and beyond.