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Austin Texas History Pictures
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To see our full collection of
Austin Texas History Pictures,
 Professional baseball
arrived in Austin in 1887 when a man by the name of John McCloskey brought an entire team known as the Joplin Independents. That fall this team defeated the New York Giants, who were touring Texas at that time. It was supposed to be a three game series, but after the first two victories by the Austin team, the Giants fled town. The following year, in 1888, the Austin Baseball Club was founded with McCloskey’s team composing its membership.
From 1887 baseball and baseball equipment has come a long way. Just look at the Nike baseball bats and accessories available today.
 Austin, Texas, the state's capital, houses the Texas State Library Archives Commission. A number of their best photgraphs are available at Digital Picture Printing & Frames.
Austin is the undisputed capital of Texas.
However, this was not always the case. Edwin Waller, the original city designer, constructed the first capitol building at what is now Colorado & Eighth Street in 1839.
Yet it was not until 1846 that Austin received official recognition by the Texas Congress as the permanent state capital. During that seven-year period, numerous disputes, disasters and even a mild coup attempt complicated the city’s struggle for capital status.
 The
most prominent opponent was the first president of the Republic Sam Houston who
considered Austin to be "the most unfortunate site on earth for a seat of
government." In 1842, when the Mexican army seized San Antonio, Houston argued that Austin was not defensible and called for a special session of Congress to meet in Houston. In December, Sam Houston declared that Austin was no longer the capital of Texas and sent a regiment to Austin to retrieve the state archives.
 By this time, Austin was suffering considerably from its loss of status and was diminishing in population. A group of citizens organized a vigilante “committee of safety” and promised that any attempts to remove the archives would be met with armed resistance. Houston’s regiment managed to capture the archives but not before an innkeeper by the name of Mrs. Angelina Eberly fired the city cannon at 6th and Congress, alerting the citizens. A group of about sixty armed men followed Houston’s men twenty miles outside of Austin, where the
soldiers finally surrendered the archives without bloodshed. In 1845 the Texas Congress voted to return the seat of government to Austin, a decision that was overwhelmingly confirmed by popular vote in 1850.
 Austin flourished in the years that followed. In 1853 a “Greek revival” limestone capitol was constructed on capital square, according to Edwin Waller’s original design. When this building burned down in 1881, plans for the present-day capitol were already underway. Utilizing the design submitted by Elijah E. Myers in a national contest, construction began on the new building using  “sunset red” granite mined from nearby Marble Falls in 1882. The new building took six years to complete, and at the time was considered to be the seventh largest building in the world.
This was something of a golden age for Austin. In 1871 the Houston and Texas Central Railroad set up a depot on East  5th street (then known as Pine Street.) This made Austin the western-most stop in Texas on the railroad line.
Cultural and artistic figures from across the United States came to visit and/or
live in Austin, including the writer O. Henry and the classical German
sculptress Elizabeth Ney.
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