 DESIGNED
FOR ALL TIME
An extraordinary home
preserved in the pages of history
BY LINDA CALVERT JACOBSON
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBERT FRENCH
As with any building that’s been
around for more than a century, the
stately home of Barry Duncan and
Gene Ann Herrin has an interesting
and colorful history. But few homeowners
can pick up a historic novel
written by a best-selling author, open it to the first
few pages and read a passage featuring their house.
“The first scene in the book Will’s War happened
in this house,” Herrin says as we stand in the formal
parlor that she and her husband have restored to its
early turn-of-the-20th-century grandeur.
Will’s War was written by Seguin native and bestselling
author Janice Woods Windle, whose novel True
Women was made into a popular CBS mini-series starring
Angelina Jolie in 1996. Will’sWar tells the story of
the author’s grandfather, Will Bergfeld, who was tried
for treason in 1917 during the anti-German movement
associated with World War I. The book opens
with a funeral procession to the Seguin home of
Arthur Bergfeld, Will’s father, the very same house
now owned by Duncan and Herrin.
A German immigrant and longtime Seguin druggist,
Arthur Bergfeld built the Victorian home circa
1900 for his second
wife and their family.
After he died, his
widow, Emma, turned
the home into a boarding
house with apartments,
which were in
high demand, especially
during World War I
and World War II.
When the widow died, she left the Victorian Classic Revival home
to her son, who eventually sold it. The
home changed owners one more time
when Herrin and her husband, Barry
Duncan, bought it in 1999.
Living and working in Houston at the
time, the couple commuted to Seguin at first
and began renovating the home. Duncan
soon retired from his job and moved to
Seguin to work full time on the project. Herrin soon joined him in Seguin, but she still commutes to Houston to work in a law firm during the week and comes
home on weekends.
While the homeowner, Barry Duncan, oversaw every aspect of the renovation, the general contractor was Gary
Helfirch. James Franklin, designer-cabinetmaker, and Mara Nelson, craftsman, also worked on the house together with
Jane Davis. John Seiler was the painter, and Cleveland Bodin, another local engineer/carpenter, did “just about every type
of job there was to do,” says Herrin. Bodin’s wife and son also worked on the project. Several members of the crew
worked with the homeowners on the house for over two years.
As you walk through the home now, it’s hard to imagine what it looked like when the couple purchased it almost 10 years ago. Sporadic periods of remodeling to accommodate renters
and decades of neglect had taken their toll on the historic home.
Luckily, the wise new homeowners could see beyond the termite
damage, peeling wallpaper, poorly planned renovations and outdated
wiring and plumbing to know that with some care the home
could once again stand proudly.
A wrap-around porch with 15 Corinthian columns sets the tone
from the outside, making the mini-mansion look much as it did when horse-drawn carriages passed by the home 100 years ago.
Through the tall doors, a large open area that the couple calls “The
Lobby” greets visitors. The column motif continues inside the
home, holding up the 12-foot-tall ceilings. Embossed wallpaper and
stylish light fixtures add an elegant air.
To the right and north of the wide entry hall and through a set
of pocket doors is the parlor mentioned in Will’s War. Gold damask
draperies contrast against the cream-hued wallpaper. But it’s the
antique bow windows with their rippled, curved panes of glass lining
the front wall that grab your attention. Getting them back to this
condition was a major project in the renovation.
“We had a lot of termite damage and had to rebuild this whole
wall,” says Duncan, who wore the hats of general contractor, electrician
and plumber.
While they wanted to personalize the home, the homeowners
were also thoughtful in their renovations.
“We wanted to reflect the period,” Herrin says. “We wanted it to be as much like the original as possible.”
The parlor opens into the formal dining room, which
leads to the television room, with deep cranberry red
walls set against white accents.
Behind the dining room is an area that the owners
believe was added on in the 1930s or 1940s, starting
out as a porch and eventually enclosed, later made
into a bathroom and closet for boarders. This area
now serves as a butler’s pantry.
The butler’s pantry leads to the kitchen, which required
some of the more extensive remodeling, Herrin and
Duncan explain. With the custom-built cabinets from the
Koehler Company, stainless steel appliances and Silestone
counters, you know that you are in a modern kitchen. But
Herrin’s choice of high-gloss white paint, a wallpaper border
featuring a 1940s-era fruit design and a panel of
pressed tin for the backsplash pays homage to the past.
Passing through the kitchen into a hallway, the homeowners
point out one of the more major structural
changes: making the hallway wider to accommodate
stairs to an attic area, a future remodeling project.
Beneath the stairs, they put in a laundry room and a bathroom
with a stunning stained-glass window.
The south side of the home is occupied by two bedrooms
in the rear and a library in the front, adjacent to
the entry hall or “Lobby.”
The master bedroom, painted in pale robin’s-egg blue,
features a massive four-poster bed and white-washed furniture
and a handsome hand-carved chest that the owners
had purchased during a trip to Singapore.
An elegantly carved headboard that the couple found
in a local antique shop complements the other furnishings in the guest bedroom, which is painted in a soft sage green.
The library was originally a bedroom, the owners say, and
its back wall is now filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases
behind custom-crafted glass-paneled doors that were originally
in the hallway. The overall decor of the room represents the
couple’s travels to Asia, as is evident with the deep green and
rich Oriental red accents contrasted against the white painted
woodwork, an embossed ceiling, stained glass chandelier and
a green leather couch.
With most of the major renovations complete, the owners
are now looking at the next wave of projects, which includes finishing
out the attic and then the garage and garage apartment.
In the meantime, they get to enjoy a home steeped in history.“Sometimes at night when the house is quiet and dark, I
stand in the dining room looking into the parlor, feeling very
dwarfed by those huge rooms, high ceilings and Corinthian
columns, and I marvel at how fortunate I am to be able to live
in such a grand and historical place,” says Herrin. “It is like no
home I’ve ever owned.”
Since the homeowner’s careful renovation, the old house,
regal and quiet, is now as handsome as the long history it has
in the hearts of those who have loved it, and even written
about it.
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