St. John Orphanage and Industrial Institute

Lee Lewis Campbell, the Milam County-born pastor behind the institute, led Ebenezer Baptist Church in Austin for thirty-five years from 1892. He also headed the St. John's Encampment Colored Association, whose gatherings drew as many as 10,000 African Americans to Austin to discuss race relations. When he died in 1927, more than 5,000 people attended his funeral, and the city named L. L. Campbell Elementary for him in 1939. Around the orphanage grew the St. Johns community, mostly former sharecroppers who built homes nearby until Austin annexed it in 1951.

What the plaque says

St. John Orphanage and Industrial Institute The St. John Regular Missionary Baptist Association, founded by Rev. Jacob Fontaine, was a conference of historically African American Baptist congregations in Central Texas. Under the leadership of the Rev. Lee Lewis Campbell, the association bought 306 acres of land four miles north of downtown Austin and established an orphans home and school. Construction of the main building was finished in 1909. Around the time of its opening, the building burned down. The orphanage building was reconstructed by Austin architect John Andrewartha and completed in 1910. By 1915, five additional buildings were constructed to accommodate the growing number of students. At that time, the Industrial Institute served first grade through the senior year of college. The curriculum included academic subjects such as math, English and chemistry. The institute also taught industrial, domestic and agricultural classes. In 1915, the St. John Industrial Institute held its annual summer school program with 2,000 students. The institute also held mass lectures and gatherings during annual summer encampments with as many as 15,000 people in attendance on the grounds. These sessions covered topics such as farming techniques, Bible and sociology with guest lecturers, including Booker T. Washington in 1911. The orphanage and school began to decline with the onset of the Great Depression. Since they were supported by the sale of crops grown on the land, a decline in agricultural prices and families leaving to find work in cities led to the eventual closure of the institute and orphanage in 1942. In 1956, the main building burned down in a mysterious fire, and the land was sold to developers for construction of homes and commercial buildings. In 1971, Highland Mall opened at this site. In 2011, the Austin Community College District purchased the property for its Highland Campus, returning the land to its original educational and community purposes. (2019)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• LBJ Presidential Library — 3.0 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.
• Harry Ransom Center — 3.4 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.
• Bullock Texas State History Museum — 3.6 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.
• Mount Bonnell — 3.7 mi
  Austin's old lookout over the Colorado, named by an 1838 traveler, picnicked on by George and Libbie Custer, and reached by a 1939 flight of about 100 limestone steps.

More markers nearby

• Elisabet Ney — 1.6 mi
• In Memory of Thomas Christian, William Strother and Josiah Wilbarger — 1.7 mi
• Hyde Park — 1.7 mi
• Annie Webb Blanton — 1.8 mi