M. M. Long's Livery Stable & Opera House

Minos M. Long was a livery man long before he was an Austin landmark. In Bastrop he kept a stable and ran a ferry on the Colorado, and one of his horses reportedly drew Governor Sam Houston's carriage at the 1859 inauguration. In Austin he served as fire chief from 1872 to 1874, the last chief of the volunteer department, which had begun after a fire in 1858 at his father-in-law John T. Miller's livery stable on Congress Avenue. His wife Amanda, whom he married in Bastrop in 1856, outlived him by two years.

What the plaque says

M. M. Long's Livery Stable & Opera House When M. M. Long and his family moved here from Bastrop in the early 1860s, the first floor served as the livery stable for Long's Austin to Burnet and Lampasas stage line. On the second floor, Long ran an opera house which was used for public meetings and concerts, In 1866 a Federal courtroom and in 1900 an Odd Fellows hall occupied the second story. Through the years a publishing company, a saloon and a billiard parlor, tobacco, drug, jewelry, and dry goods stores have used this centrally located building. (1979)

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 — 0.6 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.
• Harry Ransom Center — 0.9 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.

More markers nearby

• Swedish Consulate and Swante Palm Library — steps away
• Governor Andrew Jackson Hamilton — steps away
• Texas and the Civil War State Military Board — steps away
• Governor Edmund Jackson Davis — steps away