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Austin, Texas

Austin was settled in 1855, was incorporated as a village in 1868, and was chartered as a city in 1873. AUSTIN, the capital of Texas, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Travis county, on the bank of the Colorado river, near the centre of the state and about 145 m. W.N.W. of Houston. The Houston & Texas Central, the International & Great Northern, and the Missouri, Kansas & Texas railways, serve Austin. The city is built on high bluffs 40-120 ft. above the river, which is spanned here by a bridge, built in 1874. The Texas State Capitol, a handsome building of red Texas granite, with a dome 318 ft. high, cost more than 3,500,000, and stands in a square in the center of the city.

Chicago capitalists in exchange for a land grant of 13,000,000 acres built it in 1881. It is in the form of a Greek cross, with an extreme length of 556.5 ft. and an extreme width of 688.8 ft. Next to the National Capitol at Washington, it is he largest capitol building in the United States, and it is said o be one of the ten largest buildings in the world. Austin is the seat of the University of Texas (opened in 1883; co-educational); the medical department of the state university is at Galveston, and the departments in Austin are the college of arts, department of education, department of engineering, department of law, school of pharmacy, and school of nursing. the government of the university is vested in a board of eight regents nominated by the governor and appointed with the advice and consent of the state senate. At Austin are also state institutions and asylums for the insane, the blind, the deaf and blind; the state school for the deaf and dumb; the state Confederate home; the Confederate woman's home c 1907; for wives and widows of Confederate soldiers and sailors, maintained by the Daughters of the Confederacy~ St Mary's Academy (Roman Catholic, under the supervision of the sisters of the Holy Cross, founded 1875, chartered 1886); St. Edwards College (Roman Catholic, chartered 1885); the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary (Presbyterian Church, South), opened in 1902 by the Synod of Texas, and after 1905 partly controlled by the Synod of Arkansas; Tillotson College as a black school under Congregational control, founded by the American Missionary Association, chartered in 1877, and opened a 1881; and Samuel Houston College (for blacks; Methodist Episcopal; opened in 1900 and named in honor of an Iowan ~ benefactor).

The principal newspapers of Austin are the Statesman (Democratic, established in 1871), a morning paper, and the Tribune (Democratic, established in 1891), an evening paper. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Society is published here. Austin is the principal trade and jobbing center I or central and western Texas, is an important market for live- stock, cotton, grain and wool, and has extensive manufacturers of flour, cotton-seed oil, leather goods, lumber and wooden fare; the value of the factory product in 1905 was $1,569,353. The city owns and operates its water-supply system. In 1890 to 1893, one of the largest dams in the world, an immense structure of granite masonry, 1200 ft. long. 60-70 ft. high, and 18 to 66 ft. thick, was constructed across the Colorado River 2 m. above the city for the purpose of supplying water and power creating a reservoir. In. the spring of 1900, weather, undermined the wall, and on the 7th of April the dam broke with a resulting loss of several lives and about $1,000,000 worth of property. The rebuilding of the dam was projected to 1907. Austin was first settled in 1838 and was named Waterloo. In 1839, when it was chosen as the site of the capital of the Republic of Texas, it was renamed in honor of Stephen F. Austin, one of its founders. Under the influence of General Sam Houston the capital was for a time in 1842-1845 removed from Austin to Houston, but in 1845 an ordinance was passed making Austin the capital, and it remained the state capital after Texas entered the Union.

Source: 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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