This home was originally built as a school house for the Hyde Park Neighborhood. (the first neighborhood in Austin) Monroe Shipe was the developer of the Hyde Park neighborhood and Peter’s Father-In-Law. In 1911, Peter and Clo were married and Monroe gave them the building as a wedding gift. Peter then turned the schoolhouse into a beautiful home with its Tudor style over the next 15 years. Peter carved many elements in and around this home that still exist to this day. 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)