C.C. and Mattie Hughes Cody House
Georgetown, Williamson County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Georgia native Claude Carr Cody (1854-1923) worked at Southwestern University for 37 years, serving as a mathematics professor and university administrator. He was known as the "Grand Old Man of Southwestern." He wed Martha "Mattie" Hughes in 1883, and her father, judge and legislator Thomas P. Hughes, gave them this lot, adjacent to one he had given to another daughter, Lonetta Booty. The Codys completed their home by 1897. The Free Classic Queen Anne house features Doric columns, an octagonal corner bay and a distinctive oval window. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2005
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Claude Carr Cody, a Georgia-born mathematician, spent 37 years at Southwestern University, becoming so central to the school that he was called its 'Grand Old Man.' In 1883 he married Mattie Hughes, whose father, a judge and legislator, gave the couple this lot, and by 1897 they had completed a Free Classic Queen Anne home distinguished by Doric columns, an octagonal bay, and an oval window.
Why it matters
The house links a beloved figure of Texas higher education to the fashionable domestic architecture of the Gilded Age college town, showing how a university shaped the community that grew around it.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Claude Carr Cody
- · Mattie Hughes Cody
- · Thomas P. Hughes
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First United Methodist Church of Georgetown
Georgetown, TX
Begun in 1849 as a frontier mission served by circuit-riding preachers, this Methodist congregation gained a resident pastor in 1879 and raised its first building on the young Southwestern University campus. The present limestone church, hand-cut on site in 1891–93 and laid out on the plan of a Greek cross, was overseen by physics professor Robert S. Hyer, and it later shaped the callings of two brothers who became Methodist bishops.
Negro Fine Arts School
Georgetown, TX
In 1946 — two decades before Georgetown's schools integrated — Southwestern University professor Iola Bowden Chambers and three of her students began teaching piano to children in the city's African American community. Backed by the school board, the First Methodist Church, and university students, the Negro Fine Arts School grew to welcome more than 200 children, adding voice and art lessons, annual recitals, and college scholarships. Its graduates went on to earn music degrees and teach the next generation.
Original Site of Southwestern University
Georgetown, TX
Texas Methodists founded four colleges before the Civil War, and after the war the Rev. Dr. Francis Asbury Mood set out to consolidate them into a single, centralized university. Georgetown competed for the prize, offering this donated site, and in 1873 it was chosen as home to the new institution—chartered in 1875 as Southwestern University under a union of the four earlier schools. Mood led it until his death, and though the university moved to its present campus in 1900, a preparatory department lingered here until 1916.
Georgetown High School Building
Georgetown, TX
Rising in 1923–24 on ground that once held Southwestern University, this building served Georgetown's high school students for more than half a century. Austin architect Charles H. Page gave it a Spanish Colonial Revival face, crowned by a Baroque entryway whose cast-stone shells, flowers, urns, and garlands announced the community's pride in its schools. A gymnasium joined the rear in the 1940s as the school grew.