Austin Building
Nacogdoches, Nacogdoches County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Efforts by Texas Legislators in 1917 to improve the quality of public education in Texas resulted in provisions to establish colleges in East Texas and South Texas. Nacogdoches was chosen over 27 other towns to become home to the new East Texas College. Historian A. W. Birdwell was chosen president of the institution. This building, designed by architect W. E. Ketchum and named after Stephen F. Austin, Texas' preeminent Anglo American colonizer, was built in 1922-23 and is the university's oldest academic building still in use. The Austin Building's classical revival style was a typical early 20th century design for college and governmental buildings throughout Texas. Elements of the style are evident in the building's pedimented entry bay with columns, double-door entry at the top of a ceremonial flight of stairs, cast stone detailing, and rhythm of bays defined by pilasters. The Austin building was originally the administrative headquarters and classroom facility for a provincial liberal arts teachers college comprised almost entirely of Anglo East Texas students numbering in the hundreds. Today it serves as the nerve center of a multi-disciplinary university with thousands of students of various cultural and national origins. Stephen F. Austin Bicentennial 1793 - 1993
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When Texas legislators moved in 1917 to expand public education, Nacogdoches beat out 27 rival towns to become home to the new East Texas teachers college, led by historian-president A. W. Birdwell. Completed in 1922–23 and named for empresario Stephen F. Austin, the classical-revival Austin Building served as the school's administrative and classroom heart and remains its oldest academic building still in use. Once serving a few hundred Anglo East Texans, it now anchors a university of thousands from many backgrounds.
Why it matters
The Austin Building embodies the early-twentieth-century push to professionalize teaching through regional colleges, institutions that grew into the full universities serving today's diverse Texas.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1917, Texas lawmakers set out to raise the quality of the state's public schools, and they understood that better schools required better-trained teachers. The answer, shared by many states in that era, was the regional teachers college — an institution planted in a particular part of the state to serve the towns and country schools around it.
The legislation called for new colleges in East Texas and in South Texas, and a scramble followed as towns competed for the prestige and permanence a college would bring. Nacogdoches, in the pine woods of deep East Texas, prevailed over twenty-seven rival towns to win the East Texas school.
The building that rose to house it belongs to its moment. In the early twentieth century, colleges and government buildings across Texas favored the dignified classical revival style, and the new campus reached for exactly that language of columns and ceremonial stairs to announce that something serious and lasting had arrived.
People & events
The institution's first leader was the historian A. W. Birdwell, chosen as president to build a college from the ground up. The building at its heart was designed by architect W. E. Ketchum and named for Stephen F. Austin — the empresario long remembered as the preeminent Anglo American colonizer of Texas.
Constructed in 1922 and 1923, the Austin Building opened as the young college's administrative headquarters and classroom hall, and it remains the university's oldest academic building still in use. When its doors opened, it served a provincial liberal arts teachers college whose students, numbering in the hundreds, were drawn almost entirely from Anglo East Texas.
The design still tells that story of aspiration. Look for the pedimented entry bay with its columns, the double-door entrance at the top of a ceremonial flight of stairs, the crisp cast stone detailing, and the steady rhythm of bays marked off by pilasters. These were the architectural signals of an institution meant to endure.
Its place in the American story
The Austin Building embodies one of the quiet, transformative movements in American life: the drive in the early twentieth century to professionalize teaching. Across the country, states founded normal schools and regional teachers colleges to lift a generation of instructors from apprentices into trained professionals.
Many of those modest colleges did not stay modest. What began as a single classical revival building serving a few hundred students became, over the following century, a full multidisciplinary university — Stephen F. Austin State University — enrolling thousands of students from many cultural and national backgrounds.
That arc, from a provincial teachers college to a broad modern university, played out on campuses nationwide, and it is why buildings like this one matter. They are the surviving cornerstone of a national investment in education that reshaped who got to learn, and who got to teach.
If you visit
On the Stephen F. Austin State University campus in Nacogdoches, seek out the Austin Building and give yourself a minute at the foot of its ceremonial stairs. This is the oldest academic building still in use here, and it wears its age with real dignity.
Let your eye travel up from the columns and the pedimented entry to the cast stone detailing and the evenly spaced pilasters marking the bays. This is textbook early-twentieth-century classical revival, the style Texas reached for whenever it wanted a building to feel permanent and important.
It makes a rewarding stop on any trip through the East Texas pine country, where a college town rewards a slow walk. Stand before it and hold two pictures in your mind at once: the few hundred East Texas students who first climbed these steps, and the thousands from around the world who pass the same building today.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · A. W. Birdwell
- · W. E. Ketchum
- · Stephen F. Austin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Karle Wilson Baker
Nacogdoches, TX
From the early 1900s, the East Texas town of Nacogdoches was home to Karle Wilson Baker, one of the state's most celebrated writers. Arkansas-born and college-trained, she first published a poem in Harper's in 1903 and went on to become the most frequently published poet in the Yale Review, with collections issued by Yale University Press. Dubbed "The Poet of Quiet Things," she wrote poems, essays and historical novels set in East Texas, saw her 1931 collection nominated for a Pulitzer, and taught for a decade at Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College, for which she wrote an early school song.
Alton W. Birdwell
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Born in the Piney Woods in 1870, Alton W. Birdwell rose from home schooling and brick-molding labor to become one of East Texas's foremost educators, studying at several universities and teaching across the region. Appointed founding president of Stephen F. Austin State Normal School in 1917, he opened the college in borrowed facilities when construction lagged, personally chose its faculty, and guided it through the lean years of the Great Depression. He remained tied to the institution as president emeritus until his death in 1954.
Paul Lewis Boynton
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Paul Lewis Boynton, a Texas-born psychologist trained at Peabody College, became president of Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College in 1942 just as World War II drained its male students away. To keep the school alive he persuaded the federal government to open a Women's Army Corps training school on campus in 1943 and secured surplus buildings and land that launched a forestry department in 1945, then guided a surge of postwar enrollment until his sudden death in 1958.
Pioneering Higher Education in East Texas
Nacogdoches, TX
In the early 20th century, East Texas had no institution to train its teachers, and makeshift "normal institutes" struggled to lift the education of rural instructors—nearly a quarter of whom had not finished high school. As new state laws mandated compulsory schooling and teacher certification, demand for trained educators soared. After years of legislative and political delay, Stephen F. Austin State Teachers College opened in 1923 with 24 hand-picked faculty, drawing students overwhelmingly from the surrounding counties.