The restoration of a distinctive structure on the campus of Huston-Tillotson University will soon be in the works, thanks to a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
The Old Administration Building, which still serves as a campus administration building and a city visitors center, is one of the 40 sites to receive a portion of $3 million in grants the trust is distributing through its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
“Over the past four years, the National Trust has funded 105 historic places connected to Black history and invested more than $7.3 million to help preserve landscapes and buildings imbued with Black life, humanity, and cultural heritage,” according to the trust’s July 15 announcement.. “This year’s funds were awarded to key places and organizations that help the Action Fund protect and restore significant historic sites."
Constructed in 1914, the white, two-story building stands out on the 19-acre campus, bounded by Seventh, 11th, Chicon, and Comal streets in Central East Austin. That’s due to a combination to its Prairie Style influences, its prominent hilltop location, and the fact that most of the campus structures were built later (starting in the 1950s) and are largely modern to late-modern in design. The Old Administration Building was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1993, and it was renamed the Anthony and Louise Viaer Alumni Hall in 2008. The trust grant will go toward replacement of the building’s windows and rotten wood.
Huston-Tillotson University was created after the merger of two historically Black schools, Tillotson College and Samuel Huston College. Both were established in the mid-1870s—about a decade before the University of Texas and shortly before St. Edward’s—and each had various East Austin locations before Huston-Tillotson established its current campus in 1952.
