Old Main
San Marcos, Hays County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Prominently sited on land given by the city of San Marcos for the construction of a state teachers' college, this structure was completed in 1903 to serve as the administration building for Southwest Texas Normal School. The Victorian Gothic structure features a pyramidally roofed tower at each of the four corners. Other prominent elements include the steep gables, arched windows, dormers, and roof finials. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1963
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Completed in 1903 on land the city of San Marcos donated for a state teachers' college, Old Main rose as the administration building of the Southwest Texas Normal School. Its Victorian Gothic silhouette — four corner towers with pyramid roofs, steep gables, arched windows, and roof finials — announced that higher education had come to the Hill Country. It became the founding landmark of what is today Texas State University.
Why it matters
It embodies the Progressive-era drive to train teachers for a growing state, anchoring a normal school that would grow into a major university.
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Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Hays County's First Public Building
San Marcos, TX
In 1847, San Marcos settlers raised a rough log house of elm, cedar, and cypress on this spot — dirt floor, split-log benches, and a single room asked to be everything at once. It served as the young county's courthouse after Hays County was organized in 1848, hosted the first Presbyterian and Baptist congregations, sat beside a stagecoach stop, and later became a drill headquarters for Confederate recruits. Fallen into disuse, it burned in 1874.
Wesley Chapel A. M. E. Church
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Wesley Chapel A.M.E. Church traces its roots to 1875 and is believed to be the oldest African American congregation in San Marcos, with its first sanctuary built on this site in 1879. In the years just after emancipation it ran a Freedmen's school, teaching formerly enslaved people and their children to read and write. Through a succession of buildings, it has remained a center of worship and community aid for generation after generation.
Alexander Gates & Lillian Johnson Thomas House
San Marcos, TX
Alexander Gates Thomas, an English professor and Texas folklore authority, and Lillian Johnson, an art professor, met as teachers at Southwest Texas Normal School and married late in life. Charmed on their honeymoon by the stone cottages of England's Cotswolds, they built this Tudor Revival house themselves from native stone quarried near San Marcos, giving it 14-inch walls, a swept gable roof, and pointed lancet windows. It is a small monument to two educators' shared imagination.
Southside School
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For the first half of the twentieth century San Marcos, like most American towns, segregated its schools, teaching Mexican American children in a succession of separate buildings. When the city funded a new segregated school in 1948, members of the Mexican American community petitioned to integrate instead, arguing the building would only entrench division; Southside School opened anyway in 1949. In time it became one of the first Texas schools to offer bilingual education, and today houses a Hispanic cultural center.