Adolphus Sterne, born in Cologne to Jewish and Lutheran parents, arrived in 1824 after working in New Orleans. With a commission to supply goods to the Nacogdoches Mexican army garrison, he opened the Adolphus Sterne General Merchandise Store near the plaza in 1826. Because Sterne used his New Orleans mercantile contacts to support the ill-fated Fredonian Revolution of 1827, he was jailed for treason, but his Masonic connections secured his release in 1828. Sterne built this two-room, dogrun frame house on part of his land holdings, which totaled over 56,000 acres by 1837. Brick chimneys are located at each end of the end-gabled roof. A shed-roofed porch on turned posts extends the full width of the front.
Sterne died on a business trip to New Orleans in 1851, and in 1869 his wife sold the house and adjacent gardens and orchards to Joseph T. von der Hoya. Additions c. 1885 changed the plan into an L- and then a U-shape. Charles Hoya’s daughters Jenny (Mast) and Clara (Gray) donated the house to the city in 1958 for use as a library.
Opposite at 210 S. Lanana is the Charles and Fanny Hoya House (1889, c. 1900) built by Diedrich Rulfs in Adolphus Sterne’s old orchard. The wooden house has a full width front porch and a diagonal stair and entrance set into the inner angle of the hall. In the fall of 1835, as the Texas Revolution accelerated, Sterne traveled to New Orleans, where he recruited and outfitted two companies of American volunteers, known as the New Orleans Greys for their uniforms of grey utility clothing. The Greys were feted at a barbeque on this site as they traveled to assignments in San Antonio and Goliad, where most perished.