DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm not about to dress it up with anything extra. This one comes straight from the stone itself. South Austin, the 1890s — a time when a developer named Nichols Dawson had a vision and the grit to see it through.
Dawson, born in 1864, set about erecting a whole cluster of small stone houses right there in south Austin. Not just any houses, either. He quarried the stone from the surrounding land — the very ground those homes would stand on — and he built them with a particular flourish: hexagonal front bays.
Each one. A signature touch that said these houses belonged to each other, cut from the same rock, shaped by the same hand. Now, Dawson didn't go into this real estate venture alone.
His partner was his own sister — Mary, known to folks as Molly, born in 1853 — and she was no silent investor. Molly was a prominent local educator. She served as principal of Fullmore School in south Austin, and when that chapter closed, she didn't slow down — she went and operated her own private school.
A developer and a schoolteacher, brother and sister, building up a neighborhood one quarried stone at a time. The houses were similar in design, modest in scale, but they weren't incidental. They were deliberate.
Somebody cared about how south Austin grew. And standing here looking at what remains of the Mary Street Stone House, you can still feel the weight of that — heavy as the stone it's built from.
What the marker says
This residence is one of several erected in south Austin during the 1890's by Developer Nichols Dawson (1864-1939). Constructed of stone quarried in the vicinity, the small houses were similar in design, with Hexagonal front bays. Dawson's partner in the real estate venture was his sister Mary (molly) (1853-1933), A prominent local educator. She was principal of Fullmore school in south Austin and later operated her own private school. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark-1978