Granddaughter, now 85, has many memories of Schnitzler Mansion

When Alberta “Bertie” Brown stepped over the threshold of Todd Gaugler’s home on April 29, she arrived home, if only for a moment.

Brown, who now lives in Sun City, Ariz., at age 85, had spent her childhood playing throughout her grandfather Henry Schnitzler’s house at Gilbert and South Broadway. She knew where the secret drawers and safes were, even the cubbyholes where she played with cousins.

The house at 1002 S. Broadway is now owned by Todd and Heather Gaugler and is known as Schnitzler Mansion, one of Wichita’s most historic homes. Henry Schnitzler’s father was one of the founding fathers of Wichita and owned Snitzler’s Saloon, now replicated at Old Cowtown Museum.

Henry was a prominent real estate dealer, ice businessman and liquor distributor at the turn of the 20th century. He built the Colonial Revival house as an anniversary present to his wife, Albertina; construction began in 1909 and ended in 1911.

Henry Schnitzler’s poker room served as the original meeting place for Wichita’s first Elks Club and the lighting fixture in the room still depicts elk heads around the light.

“I know about the secret drawer,” Brown said as she stepped into the room. Schnitzler installed, in the elaborate wood cabinetry, a drawer that could slide back and forth. On the other side of the wall is the dining room. And when the men were meeting, sometimes they wanted refreshments.

“Women were not allowed into the room during meetings,” Todd Gaugler explained. “When the guys got hungry and thirsty, they could just pass everything through this drawer.”

Throughout the house, there are leaded and stained glass windows with an elaborate grand staircase that winds up to the second floor. The third floor includes a ballroom. Bird’s-eye maple is the wood of choice through much of the house.

Gaugler, who works as a pilot for Charles Koch, said he and his wife have owned the house since the mid-1990s. Before that, his mother owned it.

A love for history and a house with its original fixtures still intact initially attracted the Gauglers. Through the years, they have collected several Schnitzler items: a family Bible that includes Henry’s meticulous notes from Sunday school, written on the back of a wholesale liquor invoice; a baby crib; a trunk the Schnitzler family used when it immigrated from Germany; an ornate clock; a punch bowl, and even the wedding invitation of Henry and Albertina Schnitzler.

The front door is framed by two stained glass sconces with the letters “H” and “S” in green. The ceilings in many of the rooms have been restored to their original condition with hand-painted gold leaf designs.

All that amazed Bertie Brown.

“This would be your grandfather’s Bible,” Todd Gaugler said as they perused it together.

“I didn’t know he had one,” she said.

Brown was accompanied by three generations of her family: her daughter, Kathy Pershern of Dallas; granddaughter, Becky Horton of Oklahoma City and great-granddaughter, Gabriele Horton, age 4.

Brown’s eyes drifted up to the staircase. “My cousin was married here.”

She remembered the safe, tucked away in its original location in a foyer closet — never opened since Henry died. During World War II, the home served as a dormitory for women. The foyer coat closet was the telephone room; phone numbers and graffiti are still visible. Bedrooms on the second floor still have room numbers above the doors. The closet, she said, was built around the safe.

And Schnitzler, she said, is the correct name.

“At Cowtown, it is ‘Snitzler.’ My cousin said way back when the family came over from Germany, the people who signed them into the country changed the name and the spelling. They took out the ‘ch.’ They went with those papers and that’s the way they spelled it but then, it was changed back.”

Pershern said she arranged the tour of the historic home in time for her mother’s 85th birthday last week.

So what did Brown think?

“In my head, some things seemed much bigger, other things not,” she said.

This story was originally published April 30, 2012 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Granddaughter, now 85, has many memories of Schnitzler Mansion."