Mertz Home - Cleburne, TX - Victorian Style Architecture on Waymarking.com

The house contains two and a half stories encompassing approximately 7,000 square feet. The house features several porches, including a circular porch under the turret, a gabled porch over the entryway to the porch, and a porte-cochere on the northwest corner of the house. All the porches feature elaborate turned wood columns and Victorian gingerbread trim, fretwork, balustrades and brackets. Two small second story porches flank the turret. The house is built upon a massive stone foundation. The original conical top was from the McCart home in Ft Worth. It has since been replaced with a new one.

The house was built by C.W. Mertz, a prominent early Cleburne banker, real estate entrepreneur, insurance broker and civic leader. Mertz arrived in Cleburne in 1881 or 1882 from Paris, Texas where he had organized a Farmers and Merchants Bank, that became the First National Bank of Cleburne in 1889. Mertz built his residence after moving the old house across the street to 730 N Anglin. The house was completed in 1894, and occupied by Mertz and his family for at least a decade. Mertz still lived here in 1900, but had moved by 1907, probably making the move around 1904 or 1905.

Reportedly, Mertz built the house with towers to remind him of the castles in Germany. He was the first one to fence in his 2,800 acre ranch which set off a great range war and eventually cut off the cattle drives on the Chisholm Trail, which spurred the development of Rail-Heads at Abilene and Fort Worth. He also introduced Johnson Grass to the area. The large Bois d’arc trees with their thorny branches inspired Joseph Glidden to invent barbed wire. The house was purchased by Ben Leach in 1970, for $5,000 and totally restored after it had been vacant and vandalized for many years.