Site of Old Houston Academy

The Handbook counts three Houston Academies: Henry F. Gillette's college preparatory school of 1844, this one, and Chris W. Welch's of 1896. This academy was chartered on August 29, 1856, with William Marsh Rice, Peter W. Gray, Cornelius Ennis and Thomas W. House among its incorporators, and it opened in 1858. By 1859 it had a two-story brick building, 400 students in separate classrooms for boys and girls, Ashbel Smith as superintendent, and classes in fencing, painting and gymnastics. Sam Houston spoke there in December 1860, and wounded soldiers used its 600-volume library.

What the plaque says

Site of Old Houston Academy Founded 1856. Lost most of its male students to Confederate army in Civil War. In 1864-1865 building was used as an army hospital. Was site in 1867 for the lying-in-state of body of General Albert Sidney Johnston, who had lived near Houston. (A secretary of war, Republic of Texas; veteran of Black Hawk War, Texas Revolution, Mexican War; Gen. Johnston died in 1862 Civil War Battle of Shiloh.) Became Clopper Institute, 1881. In city school system, has been known as Central High and Sam Houston High School before use as school district headquarters. (1965)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Sam Houston Park and the Heritage Society — 0.7 mi
  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 — 1.5 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 — 1.8 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 — 2.5 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

• Daughters of the Republic of Texas — steps away
• M. D. Anderson — steps away
• Christ Church Cathedral — 0.2 mi
• Harris County Courthouse of 1910 — 0.4 mi