New Braunfels is swapping a highway pit stop for a piece of its own history. The city's Visitor Center, long stationed along I-35, is relocating to the Hinman House at 161 S. Castell Ave., a limestone home built around 1868 that stands across the street from Krause's Cafe in downtown New Braunfels.
The move was detailed in an article from Community Impact, which reported that the Visitor Center was established in 1997 as a standalone highway facility built to accommodate tourists traveling along I-35. Mason Dyer, the Visitor Center's manager, presented details about the relocation at a downtown association meeting on October 6, according to the outlet. The Hinman House itself has been carefully restored, and it's described as New Braunfels' first building made from hand-cut German limestone.
That description lines up with independent research into the structure: the Sophienburg Museum and Archives identifies the Hinman House as the first stone house built in New Braunfels, with exterior walls made of twenty-inch-thick stone masonry of squared, hammer-dressed local limestone. The museum's history also notes that Chase Bank gifted the house to the Braunfels Foundation in 1999, and that the building was designated a Texas Historical Landmark in 2009.
A Nonprofit Office Becomes a Restoration Project
Before it was cleared for its next chapter, the Hinman House spent 25 years serving as the office for Communities In Schools of South Central Texas, per Community Impact's earlier coverage of the restoration effort. In February, the Braunfels Foundation Trust announced it would establish a permanent home in the house, according to the New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce. The budget for the work came in at $1 million, with the project's focus on structural preservation and maintaining the building's architectural character, and completion was expected by late July, the same Community Impact report noted.
The Visitor Center's mission at its new address stays rooted in the same goals it's always had: promoting New Braunfels as a year-round destination, engaging with the community, and educating visitors about the city's German heritage, local landmarks, and the Hinman House itself, per the original Community Impact reporting.
Spooktacular Marks the Public Debut
The new location will open its doors during the city's annual Downtown Spooktacular, which Visit NB lists as happening Thursday, October 29, from 5 to 7 p.m. in Main Plaza, according to visitnbtx.com. A grand opening is planned to follow on November 20. Inside, visitors will find a postcard place where community members can become pen pals with residents at local retirement homes and view historic postcards, with the postcards themselves supplied by the Sophienburg Museum and Archives. Families will also find a playscape stocked with New Braunfels-themed toys and a river mural meant to help children learn about the heart of the city, and children will be able to write letters and mail them to Santa.
One wrinkle remains unresolved in publicly available listings: Visit NB's own event page places the Visitor Center at the Hinman House at 390 South Seguin Avenue, while other sources, including a mySA feature on the building's 158-year history, list the Hinman House's address as 161 S. Castell Ave. That discrepancy has not been clarified in the available reporting.
A Downtown Bet Amid a Booming Tourism Year
The relocation lands as New Braunfels' hospitality industry has been posting strong numbers. Tourism in the city generated $1.3 billion in revenue in 2025, according to Community Impact's reporting on the hospitality sector. Visit NB has separately reported that more than 6 million people visited New Braunfels in 2024, with fall visitation that year up 6 percent from 2023. Neither source draws a direct line between that tourism growth and the decision to move the Visitor Center downtown, but the timing places the historic home's debut squarely in the middle of one of the city's busiest tourism stretches.
