J. L. Buaas Building
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Norwegian immigrant John L. Buaas moved to Austin in 1839 and in 1871 was appointed city alderman by Reconstruction governor E.J. Davis. In 1875 he built a mercantile store here. The two-story Italianate commercial structure was designed with two facades, one facing Pine (5th) Street, and the other on Pecan (6th) Street. Buaas sold the building in 1879, and since then it has been used for various commercial establishments and is now part of the revitalization of Old Pecan Street. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1983
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Norwegian immigrant John L. Buaas came to Austin in 1839 and rose to be appointed a city alderman under Reconstruction governor E. J. Davis. In 1875 he built this two-story Italianate mercantile store, cleverly designed with facades on both Pine (Fifth) and Pecan (Sixth) Streets. Though Buaas sold it in 1879, the building has served commercial tenants ever since and today anchors the revitalized Old Pecan Street district.
Why it matters
The Buaas Building reflects both the immigrant enterprise and the Reconstruction-era politics that built up Austin's commercial core in the decades after the Civil War.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The Buaas Building rose in 1875, in the thick of Reconstruction and the opening of the Gilded Age. The Civil War was a decade past, and towns across the country — Austin among them — were turning their energy toward commerce. The capital of Texas was growing into a real city, and its downtown streets were filling with the two-story brick storefronts that signaled ambition and permanence.
This was a boom time for building and for enterprise, when a merchant with capital and confidence could put up a substantial commercial block and expect the city to grow up around it. The Italianate style of the building — a favorite for commercial architecture of the era — was the look of a downtown that meant business.
It was also a moment shaped by immigration and by the fraught politics of Reconstruction. New arrivals were helping build the country's commercial life, while the postwar reordering of Southern government touched everything, including who held local office in a growing capital.
People & events
At the center of the story is John L. Buaas, a Norwegian immigrant who came to Austin in 1839 — remarkably early, when the town was barely getting started. He put down roots and rose in local life, and in 1871 he was appointed city alderman by Reconstruction governor E. J. Davis, a detail that ties one immigrant merchant directly to the charged politics of the era.
In 1875 Buaas built his mercantile store here, and he built it cleverly. The two-story Italianate structure was designed with two facades — one facing Pine Street, now Fifth, and the other on Pecan Street, now Sixth — so the building could face and serve two thoroughfares at once. It was a shrewd piece of commercial thinking dressed in handsome architecture.
Buaas sold the building in 1879, only a few years after raising it, but the structure outlasted its builder's ownership many times over. Through a long parade of commercial tenants, it kept its place on the street, and it survives today as part of the revitalized Old Pecan Street district, recognized as a Recorded Texas Historic Landmark in 1983.
Its place in the American story
Buaas's life traces one of the great through-lines of American history: the immigrant who arrives early, builds a business, and helps build a city. A Norwegian who reached a rough Texas town in 1839 and rose to civic office and commercial standing embodies the promise that drew millions of newcomers to the country in the nineteenth century.
His appointment as alderman under a Reconstruction governor links this modest storefront to one of the most consequential and contested chapters in the national story — the effort to remake Southern government after the Civil War. The politics of that moment reached all the way down to who ran the affairs of a growing capital city.
And the building's long second life speaks to a national pattern of downtown decline and rebirth. Nineteenth-century commercial blocks that might have been lost instead became the backbone of revitalized historic districts. The survival and revival of a building like this is how American cities keep a physical link to their founding generations of merchants and immigrants.
If you visit
Start by finding the building's clever trick: its two facades. Walk around and notice how it presents itself to both Fifth Street and Sixth — Pine and Pecan in the old names — so you can appreciate the double-fronted design that let one merchant's store face two busy streets at once. It's a piece of nineteenth-century commercial cunning hiding in plain sight.
Look up, too, at the Italianate details of this two-story block, the kind of ornament that marked a confident Gilded Age storefront. Then set it in its neighborhood: this is part of Old Pecan Street, a revitalized historic district where century-old buildings now house new life, so the block sits among good company.
As a stop on a downtown Austin walk, the Buaas Building rewards a moment of reflection on how much one storefront can hold — an immigrant's early arrival, Reconstruction-era politics, and the long story of a city block that has stayed in business, in one form or another, for well over a century.
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
- · John L. Buaas
- · E. J. Davis
Themes & tags
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