Comfort in Details

Three friends share a passion for preservation in Comfort & Center Point
by Megan Willome

Almost 50 years ago, Ed Story was living and working in Vietnam and Thailand, when he got a hankering to find a piece of Texas to call his own.

“I came here in ’74 to buy a bit of land,” Ed said. “Every day I’d drive out 100 miles, looking.”

Ed says that back then Fredericksburg was actively preserving its historic buildings, but Comfort was not. Much of the town was boarded up. He found an 1880 house that had once been a florist’s shop and before that, at the turn of the century, a blacksmith. It would be the perfect office for this oil executive, and the cold storage that used to hold flowers would be a perfect spot to store wine. The deal closed, and the restoration began. He hasn’t stopped buying and restoring properties and ensuring they get the historic designation to protect them for future generations.

“Once we’ve restored a building, it’ll be protected,” Ed said.

Read the rest of the story in the fall issue of Rock&Vine