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Over
one hundred and thirty years ago Texans celebrated the completion of the Texas
Capitol in Austin.
But,
as in past observances, there will be little acknowledgment of the role that East
Texas, especially the town of Rusk,
played in the capitol’s
completion. |
East Texans who visit
the capitol
may guess that some of its woodwork came from East
Texas forests, but they rarely realize that the iron staircases and mammoth
columns were produced by Texas convicts housed in the old State Penitentiary at
Rusk (now a hospital for the mentally
ill).
Thanks to a master’s degree thesis written by Sandra Fuller Allen
at Stephen F. Austin State University in 1974, we have an enlightening account
of the role Rusk played in the
Capitol’s construction
in the late l880s. |
 |
A contract executed
between the Texas Capitol Commission and contractor Gus Wilke called for Rusk’s
prison to produce some two million pounds of structural cast iron items for the
capitol, including
castings for the principal columns, pedestals and caps, the dome and other ornamental
work.
The state earlier built a 25-ton blast furnace, known as Old Alcade,
at Rusk with R.A. Barrett as its
superintendent. The furnace originally made items such as kettles, sash weights,
and farm implements, but was used for capitol iron when Barrett became a consultant
for the capitol project.
Transporting the heavy iron items from Rusk
to Austin posed a problem. Since horse-drawn
wagons could carry less than a ton over unpaved roads, which were impassable in
poor weather, the answer lay with the railroads.
At the time, Rusk’s
rail connections to Austin were interrupted
by an unserved stretch between Alto
and Lufkin. Convicts were soon
assigned to build 22 miles of narrow gauge railroad to connect the Kansas and
Gulf Short Line with the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad at Lufkin.
But that didn’t totally resolve the transportation issue. The convicts’
line was narrow gauge while other lines used standard gauge rails. The difference
forced haulers to unload the iron castings from one track and load them on another--a
maneuver repeated several times before the iron arrived in Austin.
Some
of the Rusk castings were substituted
with new parts because of changes is the capitol plans. The drawings of the capitol
dome called for cast-iron plates, but galvanized iron from Belgium was substituted
because of the weight of the Rusk
castings. |
 |
When the columns for
the capitol colonnade were delivered to Austin,
they were rejected by two Building Commission members because of their weight.
However, since granite (which had been chosen over limestone for the capitol’s
exterior) would have doubled the weight, the rejection of the Rusk
iron was revoked and the columns were installed.
Today, thousands of people
visit the Texas
Capitol every day. While some may recognize that cast-iron was used in its
construction, few know the iron was built by prison hands in an East
Texas community.
© Bob
Bowman February
7, 2011 Column, updated January 23, 2012
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A weekly column syndicated in 109 East Texas newspapers
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