SEGUIN, Texas – The Sebastopol House in Seguin is one of 16 preservation projects across the state that has been awarded grant funding from the Texas Historical Commission’s (THC) Texas Preservation Trust Fund (TPTF).
The projects selected fall into two categories: Heritage Education and Architecture. The Sebastopol House project was selected in the Architecture category. The $60,000 grant will be utilized to make repairs to the porch, railings and stairs of the structure.
The historic Sebastopol House, the Greek Revival home of Colonel Joshua Wright Young and later local Seguin mayor Joseph Zorn, has survived over 150 years, a major achievement for any landmark building that has suffered the ravages of time and the Texas weather.
Constructed in 1856 by pre-Civil War slave labor, the Sebastopol House is significant not only for its age but for the technique used in its construction. The builders employed limecrete, a mixture of local gravel and lime developed by Seguin chemist John Esten Park, to create a predominantly seamless structure.
Visitors to the Sebastopol House Historic Site can tour the preserved home and learn all about the technique, popular in Seguin during the mid-1800’s, and discover that the house is one of few surviving examples of limecrete construction in Texas today.
The Texas Legislature created the TPTF in 1989 to allow a stable source of funding to be developed to assist preservation efforts throughout the state. The fund is currently managed by the Texas Treasury Safekeeping Trust Company. The TPTF investment earnings are distributed as matching grants to qualified applicants for the acquisition, survey, restoration, preservation, planning, and heritage education activities leading to the preservation of historic properties and archeological sites or collections.
For more information, visit thc.texas.gov/tptf or contact Ashley Salie, Texas Preservation Trust Fund grant program coordinator, at ashley.salie@thc.texas.gov
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