Houston City, Republic of Texas

Houston followed three months at Columbia, and President Sam Houston ordered the government to move there on December 15, 1836; it served as capital from April 19, 1837, until 1839. A capital-site commission chose a site near La Grange in 1838, and Congress passed a bill to build there, but Houston vetoed it, and Austin was approved on January 19, 1839. In September 1842 an executive order moved the government to Washington-on-the-Brazos, setting off the Archives War when Houston tried to take the archives from Austin. In the 1872 election Austin won with 63,297 votes to Houston's 35,188.

What the plaque says

Houston City, Republic of Texas By vote of Congress, Nov. 30, 1836, chosen temporary capital for new Republic of Texas. At the time a small townsite at the head of Buffalo Bayou navigation. Into a "Houston City" of mud, tents, cabins on April 1, 1837, came President Sam Houston and his government. Finding its quarters unfinished, Congress postponed its opening session until May 1. The capitol building was a 2-story plantation style house, with columned porches. It was scene of many important Indian treaties, diplomatic negotiations, legislative functions. As no church yet graced the city, it also was used for religious services. That muddy April saw the city hold its first big social event-- the anniversary celebration of the San Jacinto victory, with parade, reception and ball. On Dec. 5, 1837, some war heroes and other leaders founded in the capital the Texas Philosophical Society, the Republic's first learned organization. In a powdered wig, and dressed to resemble George Washington, President Houston made a 3-hour farewell address, after which Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar was inaugurated his successor on Dec. 10, 1838. In 1839, removed to Austin, the capital returned here, but only briefly, 1842, in Mexican invasion. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — steps away
  Ten historic buildings gathered in a downtown park below the skyscrapers, among them the 1870 house of the Reverend Jack Yates, built five years after emancipation.
• Emancipation Park — 1.7 mi
  The Third Ward park that freedpeople bought for Juneteenth in 1872, rebuilt in 2017 on Emancipation Avenue and still the center of the city's June 19 celebration.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.7 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.
• Rothko Chapel — 2.2 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.

More markers nearby

• Sons of the Republic of Texas — steps away
• Democratic National Convention, 1928 — steps away
• Thomas William House — steps away
• Edward Mandell House — steps away