Round Top Festival Institute is a performing arts and education center in Round Top, Texas, located on the Festival Hill campus. Founded in 1971 by concert pianist James Dick, the institute occupies about 210 acres of restored land and includes the Festival Hill Concert Hall, the Bybee Library, historic houses, and extensive gardens. It stages an annual summer festival and a year-round series of concerts and educational programs that pair public performances with training for advanced students and visiting artists.We had a guided tour and it was wonderful. If you ever get a chance to go there, take it. It is magnificent to see the place even if you are not there for a performance.
Begun around 1980–1981 and built organically over roughly 25 to 27 years, the 1,000-to-1,200-seat concert hall was constructed largely without formal architectural blueprints or computer modeling. It evolved through fluid improvisation led by founder James Dick and master carpenter Larry Birkelbach.
The interior is a massive showcase of hand-carved, Gothic-inspired woodwork built in the old style. It features intricate wooden designs including roughly 10,000 hand-carved wooden diamonds, compass stars, and elaborate balcony faces.
Our guide gave us a detailed and personal description of the founding and build of the concert hall.
In order not to create too much weight on the roof, the majestic chandeliers were created from aluminum and treated to look like iron.
The green portions of the columns are actual marble but the white columns were painted by an artist to look like white marble.
There are several curved staircases in some of the exhibit rooms that are beautifully detailed but extremely narrow.
Many of his compositions reflected his Texas cowboy heritage, and he is perhaps best-known for his arrangement of “Home on the Range. He wrote music for many old cowboy songs that were sung but didn't have written music.
After a tour of the concert hall and rooms, we headed outside.
This was the walk to the chapel.
This is the Edythe Bates Old chapel. Originally built as the Travis Street Methodist Church in La Grange, Texas (1883), this Gothic-style structure was dismantled board-by-board and reassembled on the Festival Hill campus. It houses an 1835/1836 Henry Erben pipe organ, the oldest American-made pipe organ in active use in Texas.
The organist that plays this huge instrument plays a music program open to the public every New Year's Day. The front opens and the keyboards pull out from the two doors. We actually got to see the back of the organ which has it's own room.
This is behind and below the wood chapel.
The grounds are beautiful and there are tables and chairs scattered around so that the public can come and have a picnic while enjoying the grounds.
Our next stop across the road was the Menke House, Aatwo-star/two-story Victorian mansion featuring classic gingerbread trim. It serves as a reception parlor, dining hall for musicians and staff, and guest lodging. It was also amazing. We couldn't go upstairs because the 6 bedrooms were currently occupied.
The house started as a one story which was donated an moved here to the grounds. The second story was later added.
The woodwork was amazing.
There are huge panel doors hidden in the walls so each room can be separated and used as a practice room for students here for training.
This unique architecture was from the front of a confessional in a church in Italy.
The grounds feature extensive landscaping by stonemason Jack Finke, including a Romanesque Stone Bridge, stone chapels, the Mary Garden and Grotto, hidden shell grottos, water features, and formal English-style walking paths.
These beautiful gardens are open to the public.
This is a better picture of the front of the Menke House.
The 210-acre campus incorporates 18 total buildings, many of which are 19th-century or historical structures relocated and restored on-site.
Our next stop was the Garden Co. Cafe in Roundtop for lunch.
We ate outside on the patio.
This drink was very popular at our table. Good thing I didn't have one as it turned out to be delicious but very potent and I was driving.
Teri definitely had it on her agenda to stop at Royers Pie Shop while she was in Roundtop.
They had numerous types of pie and a menu on the wall......no prices never impresses me. Anyway, they had both sweet and savory pie. I broke down and bought a piece because they had strawberry rhubarb which you don't see very often. My mother-in-law used to make it years ago and their pie doesn't hold a candle to hers.
And then back to Bastrop State Park.
