Austin High School-- John T. Allan Campus

John T. Allan, the man behind the manual training center, was an Edinburgh wheelwright's son who apprenticed to a cabinetmaker before leaving Scotland about 1842. He worked his way through Louisiana and Arkansas to Nacogdoches, came to Austin in 1850 and opened a law office. After Confederate service he was appointed state treasurer in 1867; when about $7,000 was stolen from the treasury, a military board heard the case and acquitted him. He died a bachelor in 1888 and left Austin about $43,000 for a school teaching the practical use of tools. The manual-training department opened in 1896.

What the plaque says

Austin High School-- John T. Allan Campus An ornate, red brick building at this site served as the first structure in town built for the public high school, founded in 1881. Construction of the facility was hastened when the classrooms in the former temporary State Capitol at 11th and Congress were destroyed by fire. Completed in 1900 from the plans of Bert McDonald and James Reily, "Old Red" featured a domed rotunda. As the school grew, additions were made to the original structure. Under the supervision of principal James E. Pearce, 1895-1918, an superintendent A. N. McCallum 1903-1942, Austin high school developed a quality academic program. Innovations included the John T. Allan manual training center and one of the earliest domestic arts (home economics) departments in the nation. The buildings here could no longer accommodate the growing Austin high school by 1925 and plans were made to utilize the larger junior high campus at the corner of 12th and Rio Grande. The switch was made during the Thanksgiving holidays of that year and "Old Red" became John T Allen Junior high school. Classes were held at the site until 1956, when the complex was destroyed by fire. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Texas State Capitol — 0.3 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• French Legation State Historic Site — 0.4 mi
  A raised pine house built in 1840 and 1841 for France's envoy to the Republic of Texas, who left Austin in a rage over a neighbor's pigs before it was finished.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 0.7 mi
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.
• Texas State Cemetery — 0.8 mi
  A hill east of the Capitol that began with one general's grave in 1851 and now holds Stephen F. Austin, governors, Barbara Jordan and more than 2,000 Confederate veterans and widows.

More markers nearby

• Site of Tenth Street Methodist Church — steps away
• Texas Highway Department — steps away
• The Woman Suffrage Movement in Texas — 0.2 mi
• Swedish Consulate and Swante Palm Library — 0.2 mi