Scarbrough Building
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Scarbrough Building Alabama native Emerson Monroe Scarbrough (1846-1925) came to Texas following service in the Civil War and settled in Milam County, where he was a successful merchant. He opened a branch of his business, Scarbrough and Hicks, on Congress Avenue in 1893, moving one block north in 1894. In 1910, on this adjacent, prominent corner, he completed Austin's first skyscraper. His new building was designed in the Chicago style by Fort Worth architects Sanguinet and Staats. It was enlarged and redesigned with Art Deco elements in 1930-31 by Wyatt C. Hedrick, Inc. and Edwin Kreisle. An early leader in modern merchandising, Scarbrough's closed this downtown location in 1983. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2002
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Alabama-born Civil War veteran Emerson Monroe Scarbrough built a mercantile fortune before opening his store on Austin's Congress Avenue in the 1890s. In 1910 he crowned this corner with the city's first skyscraper, designed in the Chicago style and later reworked with Art Deco flourishes in the early 1930s. A pioneer of modern merchandising, Scarbrough's anchored downtown Austin retail until 1983.
Why it matters
The Scarbrough Building marks the rise of the modern department store and the vertical, big-city commercial ambition that reshaped Texas downtowns in the early 1900s.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The years around 1900 were a time of fast change in Texas. Railroads tied small towns to growing cities, and money from cotton, cattle and trade flowed into downtowns. Austin was the state capital and a university town, and it wanted to look like a modern city.
Across America, the way people shopped was changing too. The old general store, with goods piled behind a counter, was giving way to larger stores with departments, fixed prices and displays meant to tempt customers. Merchants who adapted early often prospered.
Cities were also growing upward. New steel-frame construction, first developed in Chicago, made taller buildings possible. A city's first skyscraper was a point of civic pride, a sign that it had arrived.
Congress Avenue, running up toward the Capitol, was Austin's showcase street. A tall new building on a prominent corner there would be seen by everyone who came downtown.
People & events
Emerson Monroe Scarbrough was born in Alabama in 1846. After serving in the Civil War, he came to Texas and settled in Milam County, where he built a successful business as a merchant. His was one of many postwar Texas fortunes built on trade.
In 1893 he opened a branch of his firm, Scarbrough and Hicks, on Congress Avenue in Austin. A year later it moved one block north. Its success there led to his boldest move. In 1910, on this corner next to his earlier location, Scarbrough finished Austin's first skyscraper.
He hired the Fort Worth architects Sanguinet and Staats, who designed the building in the Chicago style, the steel-framed, clean-lined approach associated with that city's early skyscrapers. Two decades later, in 1930 and 1931, the building was enlarged and redesigned with Art Deco elements by Wyatt C. Hedrick, Inc. and Edwin Kreisle.
Scarbrough died in 1925, but the business he founded lasted much longer. Scarbrough's became known as an early leader in modern merchandising, and its downtown store remained an Austin fixture until it closed in 1983.
Its place in the American story
The Scarbrough Building captures two great American trends of the early twentieth century: the rise of the modern department store and the race to build upward.
Department stores changed how Americans shopped and how cities worked. They drew crowds downtown, set fashions and gave many people their first taste of a big, bright retail space. Scarbrough's was part of that movement in Texas, bringing modern merchandising to the capital.
The building also carried the Chicago skyscraper style far from Chicago. That a Fort Worth firm designed a steel-framed tower for Austin in 1910 shows how quickly the new architecture spread. The Art Deco makeover of 1930 and 1931 tracks the next national wave of design.
The store's closing in 1983 tells a familiar story as well. In the late twentieth century, shopping moved out of downtowns and into suburban malls across the country. The building stands as a monument to the era when downtown was where a city did its shopping.
If you visit
Stand back across the street to take in the whole building. Look for the two layers of its history: the early-1900s Chicago-style frame and the Art Deco details added in the early 1930s. Spotting where one style meets the other is part of the fun.
It can be hard now to picture this as a city's tallest building, with so many towers rising around it. But imagine Congress Avenue in 1910, when a building of this height on this corner would have been a sensation, and the store inside was where Austin came to shop.
The Scarbrough Building sits in the heart of downtown, a short walk from the Capitol, so it fits easily into a walking tour of historic Congress Avenue. The Littlefield Building, another landmark of the same era, stands close by, and the two make a natural pair.
Come on foot, take your time, and look up. Much of the best detail on downtown's older buildings is above street level.
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
- · Emerson Monroe Scarbrough
Themes & tags
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