Historic Sites & Architecture

The East End District contains a significant number of historic/heritage sites with prior local, State, and/or Federal designation. Huston Tillotson University (representing the merger of Sam Huston College, founded in 1875, and Tillotson College, established in 1876), a faith-affiliated private university, is Austin’s oldest institution of higher learning and a charter member school of the United Negro College Fund. Rosewood, Booker T. Washington, Santa Rita, and Chalmers Court public housing projects, constructed as part of the Works Project Administration and the 1937 US Housing Act were among the first (if not the first) federally-funded public housing projects completed in the United States; and are still in operation. The French Legation (built 1840-41), originally the residence of the French chargé d’affaires to the Republic of Texas, still today sits atop Roberson Hill, just off East 11th Street and is operated as a museum by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. The Legation building is considered Austin’s oldest existing residence. The original building of the George Washington Carver Museum is located adjacent to the Carver Cultural Center and Museum and the Carver Branch of the Austin Public Library. The building, originally constructed in 1926, downtown at 9th and Guadalupe Streets as the first home of the Austin Public Library, was in 1933 moved to Angelina Street and served for years as the “Colored Branch Library.” In 1979 the City of Austin constructed a new branch library in Central East Austin, adjacent to the original building, and began operation of the George Washington Carver Museum in the historic building. The Museum is now listed as Texas’ first African American neighborhood museum. The Texas State Cemetery (East 11th Street) was established in 1851 as the Republic’s official final resting place for elected officials, military heroes, diplomats, and dignitaries. The site contains the graves of significant Texans that include General Edward Burleson (served with Sam Houston in the Battle of San Jacinto and as Vice President of the Republic of Texas), Stephen F. Austin, General Albert Sidney Johnston, Governor Allan Shivers, Governor John Connally, Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock, and Governor Ann Richards. US Representative Barbara Jordan was the first African American buried in the Cemetery (1996). The Victory Grill (1945) is the sole remaining live music venue along the East 11th Street Corridor that links present day East Austin to the historic heyday of the African American live music scene of the past. The Grill is listed on state and national historic registers, and is a stop on the National Chitlin Circuit Trail. Within the heart of the District there are at least three churches first established more than 100 years ago and still active: Ebenezer Baptist, Wesley Methodist, and Metropolitan A.M.E.

R. H. Porter House

R. H. Porter, former president of the Steck Company of Austin, Texas and Texas Confederate history enthusiast, gathered a collection of approximately one thousand Texas Confederate and Civil War items.

Location

R. H. Porter House
1315 E. 12th Street
Austin, TX, 78702

T.H. Wyatt House

Locations

T.H. Wyatt House
1604 New York Ave.
Austin, TX
Austin, TX, 78702

Negro Women's Home

Location

Negro Women's Home
2010 Rosewood Ave.
Austin, TX, 78702

Strain House

Location

Strain House
1607 New York Ave.
Austin, TX, 78702

Houston Alexander House

Location

Houston Alexander House
1194 Comal Street
Austin, TX, 78702

D.R. Woodard House

Location

D.R. Woodard House
1301 E. 12th Street
Austin, TX, 78702

N.W. Rhambo House

Only a few blocks off the route Jeanine Plumer follows in her tour of the 1885 murder sites stands an old building in which the ghost of a murdered black undertaker is said to still be laughing. He's apparently impressed with the irony that he became his own client (see "Shades of the Past," page 44), or perhaps he laughs at his own audacity -- at the affront his wealth must have posed to white Austin -- and at the scandal he was causing through his rumored affair with a white woman. Though a young black man was sent to the electric chair for the 1932 kidnap and murder of Nathan W.

Location

N.W. Rhambo House
1102 E. 10th Street
Austin, TX, 78702

Robert Majors House

House built by Robert H. and Alberta Majors. Robert Majors was a mail clerk with the Austin Post Office; Alberta was a music teacher who grew up in Waco and taught at the Texas Colored Deaf, Dumb and Blind Institute.

Location

Robert Majors House
1119 E. 11th Street
Austin, TX, 78702

Palmquist House

Location

Palmquist House
1000 E. 13th Street
Austin, TX, 78702

Khalil Gibran Muhammad and a love-themed Poetry on the Plaza

Photo of Khalil Gibran Muhammad by Terrence Jennings.Dr. Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture at the New York Public Library, presents “The Case that Must be Made: Research Libraries, Historical Literacy, and the Future of Brown America” for the annual Pforzheimer lecture at the Harry Ransom Center. 

Date: 
Tue, 2014-02-04 19:00 - 21:00
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