Carrington-Covert House
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Leonidas D. Carrington (1816-97) and his wife, Martha Hill Carrington (1824-59), came to Austin from Mississippi in 1852. He began to accumulate real estate and on Sept. 15, 1853, bought this block from James M.W. Hall, Austin hotelman, and ten days later opened a mercantile store on Congress Avenue. In 1856 Carrington hired John Brandon, a local architect-contractor, to build on this site a vernacular Greek Revival home, constructed of rough limestone ashlar. The house was completed in the spring of 1857. The property was purchased by M. L. Hemphill in 1870 and by the John Fields family in 1881. Fields leased the building, 1893-98, to the "Texas Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital," directed by Dr. Henry L. Hilgartner (1868-1937), and in 1903, sold this site to Frank M. Covert (1865-1938), the head of a prominent Austin family, who lived here until 1936. Later owners rented the structure as a boarding house, residence, and nursery until it was purchased by the State of Texas in 1968. The Texas Historical Commission restored the house in 1972. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1962
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Leonidas Carrington, a Mississippi merchant, came to the young capital of Austin in 1852, bought this block the next year, and opened a store on Congress Avenue. In 1856 he hired local builder John Brandon to raise this vernacular Greek Revival house of rough limestone, finished in the spring of 1857. Over the following century it served as a family home, an eye-and-ear hospital, and a boarding house before Texas acquired and restored it in the early 1970s.
Why it matters
One of Austin's oldest surviving houses, it traces the capital's growth from a frontier town into a permanent seat of Texas government.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Leonidas D. Carrington and his wife, Martha, arrived in Austin from Mississippi in 1852, they were coming to a young capital still finding its footing. Austin had been chosen as the seat of government only in the era of the Republic of Texas, and by the 1850s it was a small, ambitious town working to prove it deserved to remain the permanent center of a fast-growing state.
Into that setting stepped a merchant with capital and ambition. The 1850s were boom years for Texas commerce, as new arrivals poured in and towns raced to build the stores, streets, and substantial homes that signaled permanence. A man who could open a store and put up a fine house was helping to answer the open question of whether Austin would truly last.
This was still frontier Texas in many ways, but Congress Avenue and the blocks around it were where a rough capital was being turned into a real city, one enterprise and one building at a time.
People & events
Leonidas Carrington moved quickly. On September 15, 1853, he bought this block from James M. W. Hall, an Austin hotelman, and just ten days later opened a mercantile store on Congress Avenue — the commercial spine of the capital. He was in the business of supplying a growing town, and he was building his fortune in real estate at the same time.
In 1856 he hired a local architect-contractor, John Brandon, to build a home on this site: a vernacular Greek Revival house of rough limestone ashlar, completed in the spring of 1857. It was a substantial, dignified house for its time and place. But the family's happiness there was brief — Martha Hill Carrington died in 1859, only two years after the house was finished.
The house then passed through a remarkable chain of hands. M. L. Hemphill bought it in 1870, and the John Fields family in 1881. From 1893 to 1898 the Fields family leased it to the "Texas Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital," directed by Dr. Henry L. Hilgartner. In 1903 it was sold to Frank M. Covert, head of a prominent Austin family, who lived there until 1936. Afterward it served humbler uses — a boarding house, a residence, a nursery — until the State of Texas purchased it in 1968 and the house was restored in 1972.
Its place in the American story
The story of the Carrington-Covert House is really the story of an American capital growing up. It began as one merchant's home in a town still unsure of its future and ended as public property preserved by the state — a journey that mirrors Austin's own rise from frontier outpost to permanent seat of Texas government.
Its changing uses trace a familiar national arc. A private mansion becomes, in turn, a hospital, a home for another leading family, and then a boarding house and nursery as the neighborhood and the city change around it. Countless fine old houses across America lived exactly this kind of layered life, each new use written over the last, until the question became whether anything old would be saved at all.
Here, it was. The building's survival and restoration reflect the twentieth-century movement to preserve historic places rather than clear them away — the recognition that a city's oldest surviving houses are part of how it understands itself. As one of Austin's early houses to endure, it anchors the capital's memory of its own beginnings.
If you visit
Look first at what the house is made of. The rough limestone ashlar walls, raised by a local builder in the 1850s, give it a solid, handmade dignity, and its restrained Greek Revival lines speak to the taste of a young, aspiring capital. Standing before it, you are looking at one of Austin's early surviving homes, finished in the spring of 1857.
As you take it in, let its long life play out in your mind: a merchant's family home touched early by loss, then decades later an eye-and-ear hospital, a prominent family's residence, and finally humbler quarters before the state stepped in to save and restore it. Few buildings wear so many chapters at once, and knowing them makes the quiet façade far more interesting.
The house sits near the heart of Austin, close to the Congress Avenue corridor where its first owner once kept his store, which makes it an easy and rewarding stop while you explore the capital's historic core. Admire it as the carefully preserved landmark it is, cared for by the state agency that restored it — a small, sturdy survivor of the city's earliest days.
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
- · Leonidas D. Carrington
- · Frank M. Covert
- · John Brandon
Themes & tags
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