Raymond-Morley House

The Raymond-Morley House was built, in what was at the time, far west Austin between 1874 and 1876. Few Austinites would have chosen a site this far out when so many others were building in the area west of the State Capitol building.

The original owner was John L. Raymond, and the home that he constructed was somewhat different than the house in its present condition. Herein lies the main significance of this particular structure. Owners changed as did the tastes and desires of the changing times and, consequently, so did the house. The original concept for the house was typical of the mid-eighteenth century in that while looking back to its classical heritage, it reached forward to some of the trends of the future. Segmentally arched openings were symetrically placed on either side of the central door and also on the sides and the upper floor. A timid attempt at asymmetry showed a slight projection of about eight feet at the rear, on the north side of the house.

Sometime between 1876 and 1893 the rather small stairway in the west end of the rear extension was replaced by a magnificent U-curved wood stairs probably constructed by John W. Mannings, an Austin cabinet maker. The new stairs partially covered a transom over the rear door of the house. Evidence of the removal of ceiling joists to accommodate the stairs can still be seen in an indentation in the wall at floor level at the back of the house above the previously mentioned transom.

S.K. Morley purchased the property from B.J. Kopperl in 1893, after Mr. Kopperl had purchased the same property in 1889 from John Raymond, the original owner. By 1900, Mrs. Morley decided that the time had come to expand the parlor which was located on the ground floor on the north side. She has been used to a larger parlor and to get the additional space, an extension was brought out to about the edge of the porch and a gable was added above. The large panes of glass that were being seen in other parts of Austin were chosen for the east front of the new addition and the older windows on the original east front that had to be removed, were probably reused on the north and south sides of the extension. The extension made it possible to build a double fireplace and in so doing divide the original one room into two.

The several wooden additions were probably added by the Morleys starting soon after they moved into the house until Mrs. Morley died in 1929. This included the addition at the rear of the south room which became an upstairs bedroom for one of the Morley's daughters and a downstairs bedroom for the children's governess. A brick kitchen was separated by a breeze-way at the rear of the house as the central hall was continued as a porch to the kitchen.

Cora Lucile Morley became sole owner of the house in 1929, and as she lived there by herself for another forty-three years, she made additional changes that enabled her to use one part of the house as an apartment. These alterations consisted only of adding interior kitchens and minor changes in the disposition of certain fireplace mantels and lighting fixtures throughout the house.

The Raymond-Morley house can speak very directly to the changes that have taken place in its near one-hundred year history. Even without a relatively complete knowledge of the history of the people who have lived there, by examining the structural and decorative changes that have taken place, one could probably recreate a close approximation of these lives and their relation to their times. In no better way does a building live on.