Historic Name:	Mansbendel | Shipe
		Architect | Builder:	Peter Mansbendel|
		Year:	1915
		Style:	Tudor Revival
		Areas of Significance:	Art, Architecture
		City:	Austin

This was Peter Mansbendel's personal home in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Austin. He carved many elements in and around this home. This home was perhaps his greatest labor of love. The carver's humor is evident in the stairway leading from the living room to the second floor. Each newel post is mounted with a fanciful figure. A chubby infant (said to be the portrait of Peter Jr.), snail, frog and owl. As Peter, Jr. tells us "The story behind the staircase, is about the progress or stages in a child's life. First a child is born who later learns to crawl at a snail's pace, later the child learns to hop like a frog and lastly finds the wisdom of a owl."

Above the tiling in the bathroom and carved into the wooden panels are fish, lobsters, octopi, and crabs, each was previously tinted in natural colors and pictured swimming in seaweed. Mansbendel was rather proud of this achievement. "It's a real economic success," he ventured. "A bucket of sand in the tub makes you feel quite bathing beachy (and) you don't spend any money on a bathing suit or for train fare getting there."

It was in this home, indelibly stamped with his outsized personality, that Peter Mansbendel held forth most impressively. The home has been beautifully restored to it's past glory in the last two years (2004-05) by architect John Mayfield. (National Historical Place #90001183 added 1990)