Southgate-Lewis House

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Southgate-Lewis House in Travis County. Now, this story starts the way the best ones do, with a man who worked with his hands and built something meant to last. John Southgate was a local bookbinder and printer, and in 1888 he had this house built for his family.

Not just any house, either. This was a high Victorian structure, the kind that announces itself. A bay window catching the light just so, bands of shingles running along the second floor, and distinctive window surrounds that told the whole neighborhood somebody here had taste and meant business.

A bookbinder and printer building a house like that, there's a quiet ambition in that detail worth sitting with for a moment. Then the years rolled on, as years do, and in 1913 a businessman named Charles Lewis came along and purchased the home. Charles Lewis was born in 1872, and he passed in 1922, and in the years he held this property, something interesting happened.

The place became more than a house. There was a neighborhood ice cream shop on the property. And somewhere on those same grounds, his daughter ran a one-room school.

Think about that combination for a second. A place where a child could sit at a desk and learn to read, then step outside into the kind of afternoon that ends with ice cream. The Lewis family kept the home after Charles was gone, held onto it all the way until 1979, the better part of the twentieth century spent under one family's care.

A bookbinder built it to endure, and it did.

What the marker says

Local bookbinder and printer John Southgate had this house built for his family in 1888. The high Victorian structure features a bay window, second-floor bands of shingles, and distinctive window surrounds. Businessman Charles Lewis (1872-1922) purchased the home in 1913. A neighborhood ice cream shop and a one-room school operated by his daughter were also on the property during his ownership. The home remained in the Lewis family until 1979. (1988)