Round Top: Looking From the Outside In

When I first came to Round Top the mayor was Don Nagel.

The café was Birkelbach’s. One day in the early 1970s I went to a barbecue lunch there with Miss Ima Hogg (Winedale) and James Dick (Festival Hill). I remember wondering what Mr. Birkelbach thought of the potato salad Miss Hogg brought to the meal in a large, cut glass dish.

Of course, except for him we were all outsiders that day.

Leon Hale first came to Round Top in the late 1940s. He and I acquired our place at Winedale in 1985. Some things had changed by then, although Don Nagel was still mayor.

The Antique Show was held in the Rifle Hall, featuring decorative arts of high quality. Birkelbach’s had become Royer’s, today an institution of its own.

Change and growth were happening all around us, but at a pace and scale that seemed liveable.

Towns and villages notable for charm and visual appeal exert a strong attraction for city people everywhere.

Some of those charming towns speak with a wordless voice too strong for careless change to ruin. They speak of heritage and endurance. Memory and continuity.

Hale and I thought Round Top was such a place, although lately I’m not so sure.

The two of us have never passed through the membrane that separates newcomers from locals. But our long residence in the area as loving outsiders has given us a unique perspective on the current drift.

My viewpoint is formed also by years in historic preservation as it morphed from building replicas to restoring the authentic to the more hybrid approach of adaptive reuse.

It all starts with the buildings and landscape that are already there, in place. Call that context. Think of it as pie—pumpkin, maybe. Now drop an anchovy into your next bite. Not a good combination.

Respecting context keeps the appealing vibe of a place alive. Also not good to set a five-layer wedding cake on top of your ten-inch custard pie. Not if you value the pie, anyway.

You see the result in Houston all the time when a speculative vanity house goes up on a street of gracious two-story family homes.

This is called an error of scale. For example, Round Top’s “Taj Mahal” bathrooms that are so disproportionately large for the location.

I figure Round Top will become known for having the most beautiful municipal toilets in Texas. With the reddest roof.

Beside them, the Courthouse (Town Hall) stands in mute, but articulate, witness to the mistake.

So now the suggestion is floated to demolish this century-old building that forms the center of Round Top and embodies an important part of its history and identity.

Rebuilding it would allow various “ corrections” that might help it match the toilets, I assume.

If that seems like burning the barn because the horses got loose, there is an alternative.

The Courthouse can be renovated. It’s done all the time in Round Top and elsewhere.

If the hoary argument is made that renovation is more expensive, remember why people keep coming here. Why tourists come.

Not just to buy, but to be.

In a place built on the scale of a person, with shops and restaurants aimed at people, not cars. Where you can feel like an individual, not a merchandizing target. And where authenticity still rises above hype.

Readers can contact Hale at bfhale2017@gmail.com She is president of the Friends of Winedale. Her new book, This Familiar Heart, is available at the Fayette County Record office and bookstores, on and offline, everywhere.