Flower Hill Centre. Explore the Charm of Austin's Historic Flower Hill Centre

Hey, good morning, everyone. Happy Friday, June 11th, 10:16 a.m. This is Gary for City Vibe. I'm out taking a tour of one of the lesser known historic buildings in Austin. Uh, this is Flower Hill. It sits on West 6th Street. Uh, just a couple of blocks west of Lamar. And uh, let me tell you a little bit about Flower Hill. So this property was established in the 1870s by a Presbyterian minister by the name of Smoot, uh, originally from Bowling Green, Kentucky. Uh, he visited Austin a couple of times in the 1870s, uh, to help establish the Southern Presbyterian Church of Austin. And fell in love with this tract of land here in West Austin. And uh initially built a very modest property here with bricks, in fact, that were made, uh, Barton Springs, Zilker area. And so the story goes, he was in such a rush to establish the house that the bricks were still soft. Um, and you can sort of see that in the texture of the brickwork here, that they were still malleable to a certain extent. You can see a lot of people have touched the bricks for that very reason. Um, he originally called this, uh, estate. Uh, pecan place, uh, because he bought, uh, pecan trees from his native Kentucky here. After a couple of seasons. Uh, they didn't grow, um. But uh his wife had uh had seen enough uh of the beautiful Texas uh wild flowers that she uh replanted the land and it became Flower Hill, and that's what it's known by today. Um Reverend Smoot actually continued to build onto the property, as you can see, uh, the front house has been built onto. Over the years, uh, to include halls and a function spaces essentially, and the uh famous Texas author, O. Henry was actually married here. Uh, this is the view, uh, looking out onto West 6th from the Smoot residence on Flower Hill.