Carrington-Covert House
1511 Colorado St., Austin, TXThe Carrington-Covert House is one of the few remaining houses on State property which date back to the 1850s. It is notable for its exceptionally fine stonework. The Texas State Historical Survey Committee has made plans to restore the exterior and to use the building as its new headquarters by 197 2, with the downstairs as museum rooms and the upstairs as offices.
In 1852, Leonidas Davis Carrington, a successful merchant from Columbus, Mississippi, arrived in Austin, He opened a merchandise store on Congress Avenue, and began to buy pieces of land in and around Austin. His most successful business ventures centered around land speculation, and for many years he bought property north and west of Austin, frequently for less than 1 cent per acre.
Within a few years, Carrington had become a very wealthy man, and in 1853, he began to make plans for an elegant house. On September 15th, he purchased a lot north of the Capitol for $1,000 from Captain James M.W, Hall. Records from his store show that he purchased building materials from 1853 to 1857. The date of completion is not known, but it must have been some time during those four years. Carrington built his home of white limestone which may have been quarried from Comal Bluff. The house was two stories high and had walls twenty inches thick. It included twelve principal rooms and two large halls, and the flooring in all the rooms appears to have been of wide pine boards.
On the fifth of May, 1870, Carrington sold the house and land to M.L. Hemphill of Bastrop. Later Mr. and Mrs. Frank M. Covert of Austin bought the house from Hemphill. The Coverts did considerable remodeling and by the early 1900s they had removed the fireplaces and staircase and made some frame additions to the rest of the house. On September 17, 1944, Covert sold the house for $18,500. Then, in 1968, a state agency bought the property and decided to demolish the house to make room for a modern building.
Bibliography
Parmelee, Deolece. The Carrington-Covert House in 19th Century Austin , monograph, Austin, 1968.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1970.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.