Michael Butler and Butler Brick Company
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Michael Butler (1842-1909) emigrated from Limerick, Ireland, to New York City in 1866 and worked as a bricklayer. After traveling the country pursuing the masonry trade, Butler arrived in Dallas in 1869 and established a brick plant on the Trinity River. From 1869 to 1873, Butler’s plant produced handmade bricks using the sun-dried brick method. In 1873, Butler sold the Dallas plant to his brother, Patrick Butler, and moved to Austin, establishing his first Austin brick plant at the foot of East Avenue (now IH-35) on the north bank of the Colorado River. Flooding forced him to move, and in 1876 he purchased land and moved operations to the area roughly bordered by the Colorado River (Lady Bird Lake), South First Street, present-day Barton Springs Road and Barton Creek. These brickyards remained in place until 1958. The interior of the Texas Capitol is supported with three million bricks from this site. Between 1873 and 1900, most of Austin’s brick structures were made with Butler bricks, initially utilizing a machine operated by mules to force alluvial clay into wooden molds. Butler married Austin native Mary Jane Kelly (1854-1935) and lived in a home he built on South Lamar until 1887 when he completed his stately brick mansion at 11th and Lavaca (demolished in 1971). Butler manufactured bricks until his death in 1909, when his sons took over the Butler Brick Company. In honor of Michael Butler, his family deeded 91 acres of the former brickyards to the city of Austin for civic use in 1941, at a fraction of the land’s value. Michael Butler Park recognizes this legacy of craftsmanship and civic pride that aided the development of Austin. (2016)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Michael Butler left Limerick, Ireland, in 1866, learned bricklaying in New York, and by 1873 had settled in Austin, where his riverside brickyards would operate until 1958. Using mule-powered machines to press Colorado River clay into molds, Butler's plant supplied most of Austin's brick buildings between 1873 and 1900—and some three million bricks that support the interior of the Texas Capitol. His family later deeded 91 acres of the old brickyards to the city, land now honored as Butler Park.
Why it matters
Butler's yards literally built early Austin, a reminder of how immigrant tradesmen and local industry shaped the physical fabric of Texas cities.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Austin in the years after the Civil War was a capital city still largely built of wood and hope, waiting for the materials that would let it grow up. This was the Gilded Age, when American towns were racing to become real cities — and a city needs brick. Brick meant buildings that would not burn, banks that looked permanent, homes that announced a family had arrived.
Into that need came a wave of skilled immigrant tradesmen. Ireland had sent hundreds of thousands across the Atlantic in these decades, many of them landing in New York and then fanning out across a continent hungry for their labor. A bricklayer who could find the right clay and master the fire could build not just walls but a whole enterprise.
The banks of the Colorado River gave Austin its raw material: rich alluvial clay, deposited by the water and waiting to be dug, pressed, and fired. All it took was someone with the trade and the nerve to set up shop on the floodplain.
People & events
Michael Butler was that someone. Born in Limerick, he crossed to New York in 1866, worked as a bricklayer, and roamed the country chasing the masonry trade before landing in Dallas in 1869, where he opened a brick plant on the Trinity and made sun-dried, handmade brick.
In 1873 he handed the Dallas plant to his brother and came to Austin. His first yard, at the foot of what is now the interstate on the north bank of the river, was driven out by flooding — the constant hazard of working on a floodplain. So in 1876 he bought land across the river, in the bottomlands near Barton Creek, and there his brickyards stayed for more than eighty years.
Butler married an Austin native, Mary Jane Kelly, and raised his fortunes alongside his family, eventually building a stately brick mansion downtown. His yards used a mule-powered machine to force river clay into wooden molds, turning out the brick that built much of the growing city. He made brick until he died in 1909, and his sons carried the company on.
Its place in the American story
Butler's story is the immigrant-industry story that built America's cities from the ground up — literally. All over the country in this era, a newcomer with a trade could arrive with almost nothing and, within a few years, be supplying the very substance a city was made of. The names on the buildings were often someone else's; the brick was his.
There is a fitting monument to that work. The interior of the Texas Capitol — the grand granite building that is one of the largest state capitols in the nation — is backed and supported by roughly three million bricks from these yards. The stone you see is the face; the brick behind it, hidden and load-bearing, is the immigrant tradesman's contribution holding the whole thing up.
That is the quiet truth of so much American construction. The visible glory rests on unseen labor, and here you can name it.
If you visit
Today the old brickyard ground is green space along the south bank of the river, near Barton Springs Road and just across the water from downtown — land the Butler family deeded to the city for a fraction of its worth, in honor of the man whose craft helped build Austin.
Walk it with the layers in mind. Beneath your feet is the clay that became a city; around you is a park given as an act of civic generosity; and on the skyline across the river stands the capitol whose interior those very yards helped raise. Few places let you see the raw material, the gift, and the finished monument all at once.
It makes a satisfying stop on an Austin history loop. Spend an unhurried hour here by the river, then head downtown to the capitol and remember that behind its polished stone are three million reminders of an Irish bricklayer who came with a trade and stayed to build.
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
- · Michael Butler
- · Mary Jane Kelly Butler
Themes & tags
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