From an architectural viewpoint, Comfort is extremely rich. Nearly the entire downtown is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Many rock buildings and businesses remain in a splendid state of preservation and did not have to go through the rigors of restoration. The 1880 Ingenhuett-Faust Hotel is one such building and the 1930 Comfort Theater (originally financed through public subscription) is another.
Comfort was established in 1854 by German immigrants, who were Freethinkers and abolitionists. Ernst Hermann Altgelt, at the age of 22, is credited with surveying and measuring the lots that would later be sold to the incoming German immigrants. The first churches were not established in Comfort until 1900. After some controversy, a cenotaph honoring “the Founding Freethinkers” was dedicated on November 2, 2002.
The downtown area is possibly one of the most well-preserved historic business districts in Texas. There are well over 100 structures in the area dating back to the 1800s, and seven of them were designed by the noted architect Alfred Giles. Mr. Giles lived in San Antonio, and he would ride horses, the stagecoach, and later the train to check his building sites in Comfort. Most of the population today is composed of descendants of those original pioneer families of the 1850s and the 1860s.
In 1918, Albert Steves erected a bat roost on his family farm in Comfort. This roost was built to attract bats in an effort to control mosquito populations by natural means. It was originally researched and developed by Dr. Charles Agustus Rosenheimer Campbell of San Antonio. The idea was to use bats against malaria carrying mosquitos. At one time, there were sixteen bat roosts built in the United States and Europe, of which only two sites now remain — one in Comfort and one in the Florida Keys
reprinted from Wikipedia and Texas Escapes | photo by thepiefamily
