Overview / Summary
HEERMANN STORE AKA VALMONT POST OFFICE
(South Bexar County in vicinity of von Ormy)
The Heermann Store AKA Valmont Post Office is located on a portion of the 738 acres from the Nicholas Mosby Dawson headright grant of 1838. It has a date stone over the front entryway that reads, “Heermann 1892”. At the time the Store was built, the property was owned by Theodore Heermann, M.D. (1822-1896). Heermann was the son of Eliza Potts and Dr. Lewis Heermann of New Orleans. He graduated from Medical School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1845 and moved to Texas around 1850. In the 1860s, he formed the Medina Guards 30th Brigade, Texas Militia and was elected Captain of the Guards. Dr. Heermann later served in the Confederate Army Engineers Corps as an aide to Major General John Bankhead Magruder. Theodore Heermann and his wife, Felipa Flores, had two sons, Felix and Alfred. After the death of their father, Felix and Alfred divided the land and Felix became the owner of the parcel of land containing the store.
The store was used as a general store for the community of Oak Island and for a short time as the Valmont Post Office (1894-1896). After passing out of Heermann ownership to John Easterly in 1910, the property was leased to Maximo Hernandez who, as a sharecropper, farmed on the land. The Hernandez family utilized the building as their residence. Ignacio Hernandez, son of Maximo, was born in the store building in 1920.
The Heermann Store stands as one of the few surviving examples of the commercial buildings of rural Texas that served multiple functions and that were sometimes adaptively re-used through time. It is a one-story stone masonry building with a basement and storefront façade parapet that faces northwest towards what was originally the Rockport Road (now realigned to form Hwy. 1604). The vernacular building has well- crafted masonry with semi-dressed sandstone block in a coursed to semi-coursed pattern with well-crafted quoining at the corners. Both foundation and main floor walls are constructed of dark reddish brown sandstone. It is rare in that its walls still retain approximately 90% of their lime-based mortar; they have never been repointed.
Also on the site are the ruins of what has been reported to be a cotton gin of which only one wall is standing. The cotton gin building was a vernacular stone masonry building constructed of a different sandstone than that used for the construction of the Store. The sandstone is not well shaped, and it does not show the same skilled masonry at the Store’s construction. Adjacent to the cotton gin ruins is a water well approximately 80 feet deep and lined with the same rock used in the construction of the cotton gin building. A stone fence if contiguous with the remaining wall of the cotton gin building.
Historic Photos are courtesy of Ignacio and Oscar Hernandez and Jackie Falbo. Current photos are from the files of the San Antonio Conservation Society Historic Farms and Ranches Complexes Committee.