Old Land Office Building
108 E. 11th St., Austin, TXTexas has the distinction of being the only state to have retained control of both its public lands and the burden of its public debt. Thus, it has the only Land Office in the United States outside of Washington, D.C. The Land Office keeps original maps, field notes, and papers pertaining to land grants and sales of property; it houses the administrators and records of Texas public lands.
The first Land Office was built on the north-west corner of the capitol grounds. Almost before it was finished, however, the Legislature decided it was inadequate. It was not fire-proof, and many officials feared the loss of valuable state papers. In 1855, the Texas Sixth Legislature appropriated $40,000 for the building of a new Land Office. The contract went to William Baker and Q. Nichols for $39,000, and Conrad C. Stremme, draftsman, was hired as architect.
Stremme had an impressive architectural career. Before he immigrated to Texas in 1849, he had served as a member of the Royal Hanoverian Commission of Public Buildings. He was a member of the Society for the Advancement of Industry, and he served as a professor of architecture at Dorpat (present-day Tartu). He received a Russian order and title of hereditary nobleman for outstanding work in architecture, and he was made a court councilor to Russian Emperor Nicholas I. In 1849, Stremme came to Texas and joined Lieutenant N. Michler's exploration party in the Rio Grande area. In 1855, he became a draftsman with the General Land Office, and by 1857, he had completed the new land office.
Stremme designed a three-story building which was fire-proof and large enough to hold all the documents pertaining to Texas lands. The style of the building was German-Romanesque; its construction mass-masonry. External walls were 2.5 feet thick rough rubble stone masonry. Internal walls were two feet thick, of stone and brick masonry.
William Sidney Porter, popularly known as 0. Henry, worked in the hard Office as a draftsman from 1887-1891. The scene of his short story, "Bexar Scrip No. 2692," is set in the building. In 1915, the state made plans to construct a new Land Office, and a year later the thirty-fifth Legislature appropriated $10,000 for the renovation of the old building. In 1932, the building was re-roofed and the outside walls stuccoed, Latest renovations include landscaping and the use of the first two floors for a museum of Texas history.
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964.
Bibliography
Barkley, Mary Starr. History of Austin and Travis County. Austin, 1957.
Webb, Walter Prescott. Handbook of Texas. Austin, 1952.
Williamson, Roxanne. Victorian Architecture in Austin. (Austin, Masters Thesis, 1967), copyright copies in Library of Congress.
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.