DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, there are houses that just stand there, and then there are houses that seem to pull history toward them like a magnet. The family home of Dr.
R. K. Smoot, out in Travis County, is that second kind.
Dr. Smoot served as pastor of the First Southern Presbyterian Church from 1876 to 1905 — nearly three decades of sermons, and if the house he built is any measure of the man, he did not do anything halfway. In 1877, he raised this place using bricks made by hand, right there on Barton Creek.
Hand. Made. Bricks.
Not shipped in, not ordered from a catalog — pulled from the earth nearby and shaped by hand. That's the kind of foundation a house remembers. And the house kept right on making history once it was standing.
In 1881, that home became the founding site of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary. A seminary, born in somebody's parlor. There's something almost fitting about that — big ideas taking root in a domestic space, between the everyday walls where a family lived and ate and argued about supper.
But if you think that's the last trick this house had up its sleeve, well. 1889. A wedding. The groom was one William Sidney Porter — you might know him better by the name he'd later make famous: O.
Henry. And the bride was Miss Athol Estes. Right there, in that same brick house on Barton Creek, the man who would one day become one of America's most celebrated storytellers stood up and got married.
He didn't know yet what he'd become. Neither did the house, probably. But it had already seen a seminary founded and a pastor's long faithful tenure and bricks shaped by human hands.
Maybe it knew something about lasting things after all. Some houses just have a gift for being in the room when it matters.
What the marker says
Family home of Dr. R.K. Smoot, 1876-1905 pastor First Southern Presbyterian Church. Built 1877 of bricks hand made on Barton Creek. Site of founding, 1881, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and 1889 wedding of Wm. Sidney Porter (the writer, O. Henry) and Miss Athol Estes. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1965