City hall
Texas Capitol
Pink granite statehouse rising taller than the US Capitol, ringed by live oaks on twenty-two acres.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Texas Capitol in Austin follows the stonecutters who actually raised it in the eighteen eighties, from convicts leased into the Granite Mountain quarry to the granite cutters recruited straight out of Aberdeen, Scotland, after American unions boycotted the job over that convict labor. It traces the recruiter's pitch, the ocean crossing, and what those Scottish workers found waiting for them the moment they reached American soil. Stand at the granite face out front, and you are looking at what their hands actually left behind.
This audio guide was created using AI.