On the left, the O. Henry Museum at Brush Square. On the right, a photo of William Sidney Porter taken during his time in Austin. Images: Austin History Center / Wikimedia Commons
Pandemic season’s a great time to brush up on your local history, armchair-style, and the thing about pandemic season is that it never seems to end — so thankfully a lot of Austin’s best cultural and historical institutions have stepped up to provide us with virtual tours and other online media to fill the gap normally occupied by doing things in the real world. But the best we’ve come across so far, as enthusiasts of both local architecture and the legacy of famed Austin-dwelling writer O. Henry, is a virtual downtown walking tour that manages to combine those things.
O. Henry, if you’re not aware, was the pseudonym of William Sidney Porter, who lived here during the 1880s and 1890s before serving a prison sentence in 1898 for alleged embezzlement while working as a teller at Austin’s First National Bank. Once released in 1901, Porter moved to New York City and penned many of the stories that kept him famous to this day — the Gift of the Magi is a perennial favorite — but despite his own story only partially taking place in Austin, the city has happily adopted the writer’s legacy by turning his former residence into the O. Henry Museum at Brush Square.
Though the museum is currently closed for renovations — not a bad time for doing that sort of thing — two of its staff members, educators Elyssa McCuistion and Wendi Laws, have assembled a virtual walking tour of nine locations in downtown Austin with some connection to Porter’s life here — and nearly every stop involves a historic building. In other words, right up our alley. Let’s take a look:
Make sure you click through to the second image for every stop on the map to watch museum educator Elyssa McCuiston’s short video about each site’s connection to the life of O. Henry. Putting together video content is a huge pain and we don’t want that hard work going to waste.
A few notes on some of these sites — the third stop on the tour includes the Morley Brothers Drugstore at 209 East Sixth Street where Porter briefly worked and the Roach & Hofer dry goods store owned by his in-laws next door at 211 East Sixth Street. We got a pretty good look at both of these buildings in our 1974 Sixth Street retrospective last week — the Morley Brothers building later became Grove Drug, and received that gorgeous old-timey sign that remains to this day:
Retail stores in the 200 block of East Sixth Street seen in a photograph from 1956. Image: Austin History Center
Another big item on the tour is the former federal courthouse at 601 Colorado Street where Porter’s embezzlement trial took place in 1897 — ironically, it’s now known as O. Henry Hall. This historic building now serves as the headquarters of the Texas State University System, and we took a closer look at its restoration back in 2017.
The building now known as O. Henry Hall, photographed after its construction in the late 1800s. Image: Austin History Center
The final building on the map is the castle-like structure on the Texas Capitol grounds at 112 East Eleventh Street, designed by German architect Christoph Conrad Stremme for use as the state government’s General Land Office in 1856 — it’s the oldest state office building still standing, and judging by its formidable appearance that’s not too hard to believe. Porter worked as a draftsman here from 1887 to 1891, and the structure now serves as the Capitol visitor’s center.
Special thanks to the staff of the O. Henry Museum for putting together this gem of a tour.
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