6th Street West - 1316

Object Type: Folder
In Folder: AF House Building

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6th Street West - 1316

The Flower Hill Urban Homestead Museum exists to celebrate an Austin founding family of civil servants the Smoot family. The Smoot family homestead grew from a four-room home with an outdoor kitchen, into a fourteen room, four hall, and four porch estate. Flower Hill flourished as a favorite place for relatives, artists, students, professors, and religious leaders, to live, study, and work. Central to the Smoot identity was a love of the arts, civic engagement, honesty, and hard work, and the family impressed these values upon their neighbors. The house was grandiose, but far from decadent, hardly was anything done away with without first being repurposed, and so behind Flower Hill’s cypress trunk column façade there fostered a resilient and creative spirit which helped shape the Austin culture we know and love today. O. Henry married in the parlor. A Nicola Amati violin was played on the front porch. Asher grew up to co-found the Austin American newspaper, and Lawrence worked for the Texas Supreme Court for 66 years, becoming the longest serving civil servant in Texas history. While, in the library, their father formed the Austin School of Theology, which since grew into Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

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[House at 1316 W. 6th Street]

Smoot house at 1316 West 6th Street. The brick house has large white columns and a 2-story porch. Large trees surround the house.

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