Goodall Wooten House
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Goodall Harrison Wooten (1869-1942) was born in Paris, Texas, the son of Confederate veteran Dr. Thomas Dudley Wooten and his wife, Henrietta Goodall Wooten. Goodall Harrison Wooten attended the University of Texas, were he earned Bachelor's and Master's degrees; and Columbia University, where he received a medical degree in 1895. He established a medical practice in Austin, and in 1897 married Ella Newsome (1878-1972). Construction of this house began in 1898 and was completed in January 1900. Designed by Dallas architect Charles O'Connell, it soon became an Austin landmark and was known for the extensive gardens planted by Ella Wooten. Renovations in 1910 changed the simple house into a grand Classical Revival mansion, and it remains one of the premier examples of that style in Austin. Prominent features of Goodall Wooten house include its handsome brick and stonework, wraparound gallery, balustrade, and massive two-story paired columns with Ionic capitals. It is typical of the large-scale homes built in this neighborhood at the turn of the century. The house remained in the Wooten family until 1944. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1990
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
At the turn of the twentieth century, Austin's prosperous families were building grand homes on the streets radiating from the university, and this was among the finest. Physician Goodall Harrison Wooten, son of a Confederate-veteran doctor, and his wife Ella completed the house in 1900 and transformed it in 1910 into a Classical Revival showpiece of paired Ionic columns and wraparound galleries. Ella's celebrated gardens helped make it a local landmark, and the family held the property until the 1940s.
Why it matters
The mansion captures the confidence and taste of Gilded Age Austin and stands as one of the city's premier surviving examples of Classical Revival domestic architecture.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When construction started on this house in 1898, Austin was a small capital with big plans. The granite State Capitol had been finished only about a decade earlier. The University of Texas, which opened in the early 1880s, was bringing professors, students and professional families into the neighborhoods north and west of downtown. Streets that had been open ground a generation before were filling with substantial homes.
Across the country, the late Gilded Age was a time of new fortunes and of new ideas about how a successful family's house should look. The elaborate, asymmetrical Victorian styles were giving way to a taste for order and grandeur borrowed from ancient Greece and Rome. The Classical Revival had been powerfully popularized by the gleaming white buildings of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Columns, balustrades and symmetrical facades came to signal stability, education and civic pride.
This house sits where those local and national currents meet. It was built for a university-trained physician in a neighborhood of large homes near the campus. Then, in 1910, it was remade in the most fashionable and dignified style of its day.
People & events
Goodall Harrison Wooten was born in Paris, Texas, in 1869. He grew up in a medical household: his father, Dr. Thomas Dudley Wooten, was a physician and a Confederate veteran. The son followed him into medicine with unusual thoroughness for the time. He earned two degrees at the young University of Texas, then went to Columbia University in New York, where he finished his medical degree in 1895. He came back to Austin and opened a practice.
In 1897 he married Ella Newsome, who was then about nineteen. The next year the couple began building a home designed by the Dallas architect Charles O'Connell. It was finished in January 1900, at the very start of a new century. At first the house was fairly simple. What made it famous around town was Ella Wooten's work outdoors: she planted extensive gardens, and they helped turn the property into a recognized Austin landmark.
The big change came in 1910. A renovation turned the modest house into a full Classical Revival mansion, with massive paired two-story columns topped by Ionic capitals, a wraparound gallery, a balustrade, and fine brick and stonework. Dr. Wooten died in 1942, and the family kept the house until 1944. Ella lived on until 1972. Her life ran from the Reconstruction years to the age of space flight.
Its place in the American story
Houses like this one record how a new professional class announced itself at the turn of the twentieth century. Doctors, lawyers and academics trained at modern universities often built homes that expressed learning and permanence. In those years few styles said that more clearly than the Classical Revival, with its temple-like columns. The Wooten house is a Texas example of a trend that changed well-to-do streets from New England to California.
It also reminds us that such landmarks were rarely the work of one person. The inscription credits the house's early fame to Ella Wooten's gardens. That is a reminder of how much of a home's public reputation, and of a neighborhood's beauty, came from women's work that official records often left unnamed. Recognizing her gardens alongside her husband's career gives a fuller picture of how these households actually lived.
The house also shows how historic preservation works in American cities. It was designated a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1990 and is described as one of the premier examples of its style in Austin. That makes it a reference point for understanding what the city's turn-of-the-century neighborhoods once looked like.
If you visit
Start by simply standing back and taking in the front. The paired two-story columns with their scrolled Ionic capitals are the showpiece, and they are meant to be seen from the street. Then let your eye travel along the wraparound gallery and up to the balustrade, and notice the quality of the brick and stonework. Try to picture the simpler house of 1900 underneath, and imagine what the 1910 transformation must have looked like to neighbors.
Think about the gardens, too. They are the part of the house's story that is hardest to see now, but they were once a reason people knew the place. Treat the house with the courtesy you'd give any private or working property: view it from public areas and respect any posted restrictions.
The house fits easily into a walking day in central Austin. The University of Texas campus and the State Capitol are both nearby, and the surrounding blocks still hold other large turn-of-the-century homes. Walking them together helps you see this house as its builders intended it: a proud member of a neighborhood of ambitious homes.
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
- · Goodall Harrison Wooten
- · Ella Newsome Wooten
- · Charles O'Connell
Themes & tags
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