Steps of West Mall

From the steps of the West Mall, this tour stop continues exploring the juxtaposition of the UT Tower with the nearby landscapes, in this case, around the campus’ western border. The Tower is one of the central architectural features with details often overlooked. With a view of Guadeloupe street, we also contemplate the campus’s connection to the city and the changing nature of the landscapes, including the racial landscape, around the University.

Franzetti Building and home to one-time resident Jacob Fontaine, undated, Austin Public Library

There are few traces left of a once-vibrant black community that existed just west of campus. Wheatville was located between 24th Street to the south, 26th Street to the north, Shoal Creek to the west, and Rio Grande Street to the east, an area currently occupied by student-related businesses and residences. Wheatville was the first community created after the Civil War by newly-freed persons in what is now Austin. Founded in 1867 by James Wheat, whose cornfields reached from 24^th and San Gabriel to Guadalupe Street, this freedpersons’ settlement had up to 300 hundred residents at its height around the turn of the 19^th century. The community had churches, businesses, a school, agricultural fields, and raised livestock.

Among Wheatville’s best-known residents was Jacob Fontaine (1808–1898), who was a prominent Baptist minister and political leader of Austin’s black community. He founded various Baptist churches in Austin and Central Texas. Between 1875–1898, he and his family lived in the only remaining structure of Wheatville, the Franzetti Building, which he also used as a church. For a number of years, the building was home to his newspaper, the Austin Gold Dollar, the first Black newspaper west of the Mississippi. The Franzetti Building can still be seen at 2402 San Gabriel Street (then Orange Street) near 24th, but is encircled by a construction zone for an eight-story student housing unit.

Fontaine was a strong advocate for public education, including the University of Texas at Austin. In 1881–82, he worked to gather black votes in favor of creating the University. Given that this date is so close to the end of Reconstruction and blacks had not yet been disenfranchised, one can hypothesize that he erroneously believed that those whose support he sought would be able to attend the University. This would not be the case for seventy more years following the opening of the University in 1883. In fact, the Wheatville community experienced economic and other pressures from the establishment of the University nearby that caused it to lose population. By the mid 1930s, in the wake of the 1928 City Master Plan that relocated black people to the East side of the city, white residents had displaced Wheatville as a black community.

See the following sources for a more complete description of Wheatville:

Texas Handbook Online.

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hpw01

The Austin Public Library

http://www.austinlibrary.com/ahc/outside/wheatville.htm

For more on the Cesar Chavez statue see the “Painter Hall” tour stop.

For more on the current circumstances of the Franzetti Building see:

Eric Russell. “Freedmen’s will be surrounded by student housing.” Eater Austin. September 28, 2017. https://austin.eater.com/2017/9/28/16367334/freedmens-student-housing-development-west-campus-historic-landmark-commission

This segment also discusses the tower and its iconography. To read more, please visit UT history expert Jim Nicar’s blog post where he explores the subject in depth.

Changing...

Next Stop

6. South Mall

1933 architectural planning map of the University of Texas rendered by Paul Philippe Cret, with the location of the South Mall tour stop marked.