Austin Hall
Huntsville, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Austin Hall, the original building of Austin College, erected in 1851 and used continuously for educational purposes by Austin College to 1876, by a private academy from 1876 to 1879, by Sam Houston State Teachers College from 1879.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Erected in 1851, Austin Hall was the first building of Austin College, one of the oldest institutions of higher learning in Texas, and it served students continuously for a quarter century. After the college relocated, the hall passed to a private academy and then to the forerunner of Sam Houston State, keeping its doors open to learning. Its long educational service makes it a rare survivor of antebellum Texas academic life.
Why it matters
Austin Hall marks the beginnings of organized higher education in Texas, a frontier state investing in colleges even before the Civil War.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related events
- · Founding of Austin College
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Austin College Building
Huntsville, TX
The Presbyterian Church founded Austin College at Huntsville in 1849 and put up this Greek Revival building in 1851–52, its two-story portico and Doric columns announcing higher learning on the antebellum frontier. When the college relocated to Sherman in 1876, the structure was deeded to the state for the new Sam Houston Normal Institute — a teachers' college that grew into today's Sam Houston State University.
Peabody Library Building
Huntsville, TX
Built in 1902, this was the first building on its campus devoted entirely to being a library, blending classical and Romanesque revival styling. It rose with help from the Peabody Education Fund, the pioneering philanthropy that Northern banker George Peabody created after the Civil War to support Southern schooling. It served as a library until 1929 and has filled other academic roles ever since.
"Old" Main Building
Huntsville, TX
When Texas set out to train its schoolteachers, this was the first permanent building it erected for the purpose. Its cornerstone was laid in 1889 at the Sam Houston Normal Institute—chartered a decade earlier as one of the state's earliest teacher-training schools—and completed in 1891 with the institute's first library, eight classrooms, and a chapel. Governors, superintendents, and founding faculty gathered to mark its dedication.
St. James United Methodist Church of Huntsville
Huntsville, TX
Organized just after the Civil War to serve the newly freed people of Huntsville, this congregation—known as the Freedmen's Church—first worshiped in 1868 in a shared Union Church building on land donated by French merchant John Courtade. Its first trustees included Joshua Houston, the formerly enslaved man tied to Sam Houston's household, and the structure long doubled as a schoolhouse for Black children. Under the Rev. Lee, the first Black presiding elder, the church flourished, building a new belfried sanctuary in 1894.