Splitrock (Burns-Klein House)
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1891, Thomas F. Burns bought 3 ¾ acres of the Jones and Sedwick property along the west bank of Shoal Creek. Burns, a Scottish immigrant, married Arbanna J. Nelson in Travis County in 1876. Property records and lumber marked “Sutor & Co.” Date his house to circa 1892. Thomas, Arbanna and six children lived here in 1900. Thomas was listed as a stone cutter and owner of a marble shop. He added an additional acre to his homestead in 1901. Thomas’ son, Frank C. Burns, owned the Capitol City Marble Co. at 211 W. 6th Street. In 1911, Thomas Burns sold the property to Hippolyt Dittlinger, owner of Dittlinger Roller Mills in New Braunfels. His niece, Anita Dittlinger Quinlan, and her husband, James, lived here with their three children from 1912-39. In 1939, the Quinlans moved to Fredericksburg and subdivided land surrounding the house into eight city lots on the east side of Splitrock Avenue (later Wooldridge Drive). In 1945, Anita sold the property to Joe H. Klein, Jr., and his wife, Jayne Linville Klein. The 1 ½-story frame house is a vernacular center passage dwelling, designed with three rooms on each side of the hallway. Stairs provided access to the attic and dormer bedrooms. Originally, the east side of the house, looking toward the city, was the front. When Splitrock Avenue became a designated street in Pemberton Heights, primary access was reversed and the west side became the front. The scenic property on a bluff above the creek includes numerous centuries-old live oak trees, the largest of which is a city of Austin registered tree. The house has remained largely unaltered, even as the city has expanded far beyond its once-rural setting.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1892 Scottish immigrant and stone cutter Thomas Burns built this vernacular frame house on a bluff above Shoal Creek, raising six children here while running a marble shop in Austin. Over the following decades the home passed through the Dittlinger and Quinlan families and finally the Kleins, as the once-rural site was swallowed by the growing Pemberton Heights neighborhood. The little house survives largely unaltered amid centuries-old live oaks, one of them a registered City of Austin tree.
Why it matters
The house traces how an immigrant tradesman's homestead endured as a quiet witness to a Texas capital growing up around it, preserving a fragment of everyday nineteenth-century life.
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Related people
- · Thomas F. Burns
- · Arbanna J. Nelson
Themes & tags
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