{"nrhp_refnum":"73001979","name":"Porter, William Sidney, House","other_names":["O. Henry House"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"409 E. 5th S.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Austin","county":"Travis County","state":"TX","lat":30.265731650000077,"lon":-97.73910387999996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1973-06-18","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Literature","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["national"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A small frame Eastlake-style cottage built in 1886 at 308 E. Fourth Street in Austin, Texas, and moved in 1934 to its present site at 409 East 5th Street, where it operates as the O. Henry Museum.","why_significant":"It is described as the only surviving residence in Austin in which William Sidney Porter (the writer O. Henry, 1862-1910) lived. The Porter family lived there for about two years in the 1890s. The house is also a typical simplified Eastlake Victorian cottage.","narrative":"This small frame cottage in Austin was built in 1886 in a simplified Eastlake style, with an L-shaped Victorian plan, clapboard siding, and porches trimmed with scroll-saw balustrades, brackets and spandrels. Decorative barge boards with finials and a king-post adorn the projecting bay, and the windows have shallow pedimented lintels with wooden rosettes. A back bedroom and bath were added in 1893. William Sidney Porter, later known as the short story writer O. Henry, lived here with his family for two years starting in 1893, and it is the only surviving Austin residence where he lived. During that period he left his bank job to edit a humorous weekly, The Rolling Stone. The City of Austin accepted the house in 1934 and moved it to Brush Square to save it from demolition, then opened it as a museum that same year. It holds furniture, photographs, letters and other items belonging to the Porter family.","period_of_significance":"1886","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Simplified Eastlake style, L-shaped Victorian cottage plan","criteria":[],"status_note":"Owned by the City of Austin and operated as a museum since 1934; condition listed as good, with interior restoration work in 1969 and 1972.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:54:18.684837-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/55/9737/40973755/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_TX/73001979.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73001979/b5ec3a21af-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/73001979/b5ec3a21af-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY 4.0","author":"Larry D. Moore","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:O_henry_museum_2007.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Larry D. Moore</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:O_henry_museum_2007.jpg"},"district":{"nrhp_refnum":"75002132","name":"Sixth Street Historic District","url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/districts/texas/sixth-street-historic-district-75002132/"},"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/40973755","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sydney_Porter_House","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8018434"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/texas/travis-county/porter-william-sidney-house-73001979/"}