The Abandoned Watson Chateau

So my wife and I finally went looking for the oldest building on the University of Texas campus — the long-deserted Watson Chateau built in 1853 — which might also be the third oldest in Austin (next to an 1838 Swedish log cabin “originally built on Govalle Ranch…and later moved to the Zilker Botanical Gardens” per Wiki so that one’s not in its initial location anymore and the 1841 French Legation museum “built to represent the French government in the new Republic of Texas.”) It’s supposedly hidden and hard to find or at least easy to miss, but honestly we had no problem at all.

If we’d wanted to risk getting arrested for trespassing, we could even have walked right up and touched its boarded-up windows. Even at our advanced age! I’ll explain how in a minute, but first some history, courtesy Marta Stefaniuk, who classifies its architectural style as Second French Empire on the Guide to Austin Architecture website: “Tucked into an overgrown cliff by Waller Creek stands a fading beauty: the Arthur P. Watson House, a.k.a. Watson Chateau (or simply “The Chateau”). The structure is the oldest building on campus, and ranks among the five oldest buildings standing in Austin.

The Watson Chateau was built in 1853, by Margaret Francis Neville Bowie, widow of Rezin Bowie (inventor of the Bowie Knife) and sister-in-law of James Bowie, who died at the Battle of the Alamo). Ownership of the property went through a string of prominent Austinites, including suffragette Nell Doom; the Granberry family; and Governor Beauford Jester’s secretary/mistress, Caroline Roget. The last private owner was well-known interior designer Arthur Pope Watson, Jr…Via eminent domain laws and lawsuits, the property was ‘purchased’ from Watson by The University of Texas in the 1960s. Watson was granted permission to live out his life there with Robert ‘Bob’ Wayne Garrett, his partner in life and in business.

When Watson bought The Chateau in 1959, he and Garrett began a steady stream of upgrades until the structure reached its current size of 1,650 square feet. The couple transformed the old house into a a showstopper….with terraced, informal gardens tumbling down the slope down to Waller Creek. The crowning jewel came in the 1970s: a swimming pool blasted out of solid limestone, encircled by a deck, guarded by twin cabanas and a life-sized, bronze statue of Mercury. Rarely a day went by without the two gentlemen hosting clients, family, or friends. After Watson passed away in 1993, Garrett continued to live on the premises until 2009.

Under the care of the university, the house has remained vacant and was never properly preserved…Currently, the university is documenting the interior and exterior of the house, and looking for ways in which the property can continue its role as keeper of many legacies: architectural, Texas, Austin, female, African American, and 50 years of LGBTQIA+ history.”

Anyway, our plan of action: Parked our car on Trinity St. just south of E. 18th, walked a half-block east on 18th just past Waller Creek, at which point parts of the house were visible up on the cliff and through the foliage. Looked through the opening of a chain-locked old wooden gate and saw limestone-I-guess ruins of gardens and maybe the pool (a small circular structure on the ground for instance — should have taken a photo of that but 102°F August sun glare reduced visibility through my iphone camera to zero.) Continued east on 18th almost to Red River, then walked up the short driveway angling back up northwesternly toward the house. Quickly reached a metal (wrought iron? sorry I’m no metallurgist) gate that would’ve been simple to get around if we’d tried — All we would have had to do would be to hop up onto the four-foot cement ledge on the right-hand side, shimmy around a metal post inside a chain-link fence, then jump back down, and we would have been on the property proper and able to walk right up to the dwelling. Alternately, we might’ve been able to squeeze through a narrow opening alongside the post at the gate’s left side; looked like some earlier explorer had either failed or succeeded in doing that before and tore their flannel shirt.

Even without circumventing the fence, there was a decent vantage of the house from there. Still, for additional views, we continued counterclockwise around the outside of the property, and at one point there was a very clear opening through a wooden fence; that’s where I took the picture at the top of this page. From there we climbed a couple floors of stairs up Trinity Parking Garage to peer at parts of the house, including its chimney, from varying heights. Amazingly and gratifyingly the chateau didn’t appear to have been at all vandalized, even via graffiti — again, it would not take much athletic aptitude to get in there if somebody with even marginal agility put their mind to it. Unfortunately, plenty of garbage had either fallen or been tossed down from the parking garage, so the ground inside the Watson property line was a bit messy. If you go visit, and you do hop the fence (and I’m by no means suggesting that you should, of course), please do not vandalize the place. But maybe you could clean up the trash?