Laguna Gloria

Laguna Gloria is a 1916 Mediterranean-style villa set on a high bluff above the Colorado River in Austin, Texas. Architect Harvey L. Page of San Antonio designed it and Jack Johnson built it of stuccoed masonry and concrete. A four-story tower dominates the asymmetrical blocks, and a carved limestone window modeled on the rose window of San Jose Mission lights the main stairway. Italian-style gardens with statuary, terraces and a fountain surround the house, and a lagoon wraps the peninsula to the south and east. The villa was the winter home of Clara Driscoll and Henry Hulme Sevier from 1916 to 1929. Driscoll became known as the Savior of the Alamo after buying the property to prevent its destruction, and Sevier served as a legislator, newspaper publisher and ambassador to Chile. The land had earlier been chosen by Stephen F. Austin as a future home site. In 1943 Driscoll gave the property to a state art association on condition that it be kept as an art museum, which is how it is still used.