With their children now teenagers, one Fredericksburg couple transforms their family’s home into a colorful getaway for Hill Country visitors.
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Story by Pamela Price
Back in the summer of 1996, not long after they moved to the Texas Hill Country, Angie and Joe Cross experienced something unusual. The entire town of Fredericksburg shutdown for an old-fashioned parade! Although the newlyweds had experienced small town life growing up in Kilgore, seeing a town completely turn its attention toward the annual county fair’s parade was new for the Crosses.
“We learned the Gillespie County Fair was the longest consecutive annual fair in Texas, having started in 1881! And it was the best parade we had ever seen,” Angie said.
The parade’s novelty was among the first clues that the couple had settled down in the right place. See, while other young couples fixated primarily on coming to an agreement about china patterns and stemware, the Crosses opted to go a step further and pick a new town.
“I’ll never forget laying a Texas map on our kitchen table and asking each other ‘Where would you like to live?’ We knew it had to be another small town and remembered Fredericksburg, the cute town we drove out to visit from Austin one weekend. Three months later, in August of 1996, we were here.”
A few more years passed before the couple bought what would be come to known as The Baumgartner’s House.
“The house is only 1,400 square feet. It’s small but quaint, and we told ourselves it would be a perfect ‘starter home,’” Angie recalled. “We decided in a few years we could move into something bigger and start a family. But a few years later we were surprised to have 2 sons, Gabe and Will, born less than 16 months apart.”
With parenthood, jobs and everything that comes with those responsibilities, life soon became hectic.
“Every year from our front porch, Joe and I talked about moving or building a new house in the backyard, but we were just too tired or too busy to take the next step. Finally, last summer with our now teenage sons sharing a room, and 3 dogs in the mix, we decided, for our sanity, the time was now. We broke ground on a new house in our backyard.”
For the couple’s teen boys, the move was bittersweet. Still, Angie and Joe worked to keep the old house filled with family-friendly charm and memories.
“When we transformed it into a rental, the only thing that didn’t get a fresh coat of paint was the old door in the kitchen, the one with the boys handwritten growth chart on its frame. It would have been very difficult to completely walk away from this house. We are grateful we could keep it and share it with others.”
This summer the couple listed the property on the vacation rental website Airbnb.com, making it available for travelers near and far to make the most of the house’s location. Situated at the intersection of a city street and a county road, The Baumgartner’s House is within walking distance to several beloved Fredericksburg destinations.
“We are just 2 blocks from Urban Herbal and the Fredericksburg Herb Farm. Urban Herbal is a locally owned gift shop, herb garden and art gallery. Our friend, Bill, makes the most wonderful skin care and cooking products from his fragrant fresh herbs. Next door to Urban Herbal, the Fredericksburg Herb Farm offers a wonderful spa and restaurant for our guests. Their weekend brunch is amazing.”
The property is also near the Pioneer Museum, the West Main Street shopping district and Frantzen Park. “If our guests don’t want to walk, we have a vintage two-seater red bike they can ride,” Angie noted.
Then again, if you’re looking to just relax, it’s hard to beat The Baumgartner Home and surrounding landscape. Given that Joe Cross owns Land-flo, a landscape architectural design business, it’s no surprise that the home’s exterior is magazine-cover ready. Yet the home’s interior decorating was a family affair as well.
“I love to decorate and create beautiful spaces, but moving into a new house and setting up our guest house all at the same time—along with working full-time as a pediatric occupational therapist, and keeping my two teenage boys from killing each other—had me a bit overwhelmed. I could not have pulled it off without the help of my sisters, Kathy Adams and Becky Braman. Like me, they have a love for interior design, but they have taken it to the next level, offering interior design services and operating an antique and vintage furniture revival business called Junk Revival in our hometown of Kilgore.”
Even the Hill Country getaway’s name has family significance. In German, the name Baumgartner means “tree gardener” or “orchard worker,” a fitting name for a home owned by a man who works in landscape design and a woman who grew up working on her family’s East Texas peach orchard and Christmas tree farm.
“But first and foremost I chose the name because it was my grandmother’s maiden name,” said Angie. “She passed away in January and she was the German in the family. Our family always teased her for her ‘German’ stubbornness, determination, and practicality. She was a hard worker and fiercely loyal to her family. She had a quirky sense of humor and was creative. She loved to solve problems, and, as a child of the Great Depression, would make the things she couldn’t afford to buy. If only I had a dime for every time she said ‘Well, Angie, you can make that….” When I think of Fredericksburg and the Germans who created and built this beautiful town, I know that they were successful because they had many of the same character traits my grandmother possessed—stubbornness, determination, practicality, creativity and loyalty. Her quilt was one of the first things my sisters and I hung in The Baumgartner’s House. It is a focal point on the dining room wall, serving as a reminder of the importance of family and the beauty you can make with creativity and determination.”
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