Per a University of Texas
featured article in 2002:
"A beautiful example of eclectic Victorian architecture, and a building rich in history, the Littlefield Home sits stubbornly on the west side of campus, refusing to alter its charmingly 19th century aspect or defer to the prevailing Spanish Renaissance style. It is something of an anomaly on a campus that is surging into the future with new construction and excitedly embracing advanced technology.
Built in 1893 for $50,000 by a Southern cattle baron, banker, Confederate officer and generous campus benefactor named George Littlefield, the home, at the time, was only one on a street full of pretty and imposing Victorian houses. Austin was thriving, and larger-than-life businessmen like Littlefield could comment upon their status—much as individuals do today—with tangible evidence such as architecture. Now it is the lone remaining example of those grand Victorian mansions.
“The house illustrates a love of ostentation, which is characteristic of Victorian architecture,” says Richard Cleary, associate professor of architecture. “It’s a statement and proclamation of wealth and privilege, but now it’s a bit of an orphan, sitting alone without the other homes of its era. It’s a ghost of the past.”
Major Littlefield was a strong and outspoken Southern gentleman, and the Littlefield Home carries the weight of his boldness and confidence well. Victorian design was not about discretion, understatement or restraint, and the home, tastefully, seems to swirl and flutter with scrollwork and columns and a profile filled with a variety of turrets, leaping spires, dormer windows and finials.
A deep, generous veranda sweeps around the home and is surrounded by intricate iron grillwork and studded with stately, blue-gray marble columns. Wide, pale marble steps, shot through with veins of black, lead up to the veranda, which is mosaic-tiled, and a low stone fence encloses the generous skirt of lawn upon which the house sits.
As is the case with most fine examples of Victorian architecture, the effect is that of a full, lacy, asymmetrical expanse that carries just enough detail, in danger of toppling over like an ornate wedding cake if even one more dollop of icing is applied.
With all of its beauty and stateliness, it was, no doubt, a very cheerful and lively home when the Littlefields lived there. It was situated on the edge of the original Forty Acres, as the campus was called, and the Littlefields, who had no children, could sit and watch the students stroll by in the evenings or as they made their way to class."
Below is another quite detailed description of the Littlefield residence, per the
Texas Historical Commission Atlas:
"The Littlefield House is a two story residence with raised basement, attic, and towers. It is built of carefully laid excellent clerk-brown brick with red sandstone trim. Although the plan shows the main hall and entrance to be nearly central, typical of the plan favored in Texas, every device was used to mask this in the facade. The main drawing room on the west and the bedroom above swell out in a large semi-circle. The wraparound double veranda and almost full cylinder of the library oriole and turret effectively fool the eye. The combination sets the center entrance and tower visually off-center. Irregularity and asymmetry are emphasized still further by an exhuberant and varied outline, especially at the roof line. At the front, each element of the interior is marked by a new invention in shape and height of roof adornment. Above the bay of the drawing room and its curving balustrade, a rich Renaissance framed window is set back as a dormer in a convex Mansard roof. The richest stone work is here, marking the most formal room. Applied columns with fanciful Corinthian capitals mark the divisions between the carefully curved windows on both floors.Carved garlands of leaves, berries, and ribbons swing between the capitals, and the acanthus volute brackets are very closely spaced. The front door and main entrance receives emphasis with a split set of three polished blue granite columns at each level. Rising above the main entrance to a full three stories is the tallest tower of the house. Arched and pedimented sham dormers anch circular openings punctuate a lofty pyramid. Patterned and colored slate shingles are the roofing material for the towers. Some of the urns and ornaments have been lost but not the spectacular effect.
A two story veranda wraps around the southeast corner of the house. This, too, is a common feature in Texas houses at this time. Here it repeats the curves of the house. The porch floors are paved with red ceramic tile and the railings and columns are of cast and wrought iron, painted green. This delicate iron work may have come from a local company as it is seen in other Austin homes of this period. There is a slight freedom in the design in the Littlefield House indicating that the designer of this iron detail may have brushed with some of the ideas that emerged this same year in Europe as Art Nouveau. The double front and side doors and their fan lights are covered with fine with rough iron embroidery. Here, and in other places in stone, Littlefield initials appear, showing that everything was custom work. The details of the two sides are continued with care, but the lavish ornament is concentrated at the front of the house. There is a handsome porte cochere on the northeast corner and a carriage house of the same brick and with a central cupola at the rear of the property. The architect was James Wahrenberger of San Antonio and the house was occupied in 1894.
The interior floor plan is basically that of central hall with two main rooms on either side. A cross hall houses a grand three string staircase. All walls of the principal rooms have a high wood wainscot capped with an eight-inch strip of ornate pressed board. A plaster frieze forms the tops of most walls. There are ornate overdoors and mantels. The gold and white drawing room contains a floor-to-ceiling framed mirror and a ceiling mural, both possibly later additions. The second floor plan is basically the same as the first. The servants' bedrooms were behind the four family bedrooms and were a slightly later addition. The house was wired for electricity and also has natural gas and their was one large upstairs bathroom. A low sandstone wall encloses the property which is appropriately Landscaped. The building has been restored with the downstairs rooms to be furnished in period pieces and with the upstairs and carriage house converted into offices.
The Littlefield House was built in 1893 by a Texas cattle millionaire, Col. George Washington Littlefield. Its picturesque silhouette, architectural embroidery, and somber color contrast strongly with the heavy tile roofs and buff brick and cream limestone buildings of Mediterranean Renaissance dervish or contemporary limestone and brick structures of the University of Texas campus. However, it fits surprisingly well as counter point and as relief. It serves symbolically as the only real reminder of the past of a university that is older than it now looks and as an architectural heritage of Texas' Gay Nineties. The house is not only a symbol of an era and the early University but it also stands for a type of man nearly forgotten. The generous millionaire, sharp and honest in his business and personal dealings, who holds tremendous confidence in his own rightful importance may still exist. But Littlefield was also a sort of man who no longer lives anywhere. He was relatively unlettered and his correspondence is a fascinating puzzle of unpunctuated sentences and strange spelling. He was a proud "Texan" who had risen from Second Sergeant to Major in Terry's Texas Rangers. An ardent Southerner, born in Mississippi in 1842 but in Texas by the time he was eight.
Littlefield was seriously wounded during the Civil War. He made his fortune initially in early cattle drives to better markets in the North. He used the profits on new investments in more cattle but also on other unrelated businesses. He founded the American National Bank of Austin and invested in real estate. At the time he built this home he was owner of the Driskill Hotel in Austin. He was a patriarch with no children of his own, choosing instead to become head-of-the family to a great number of nieces and nephews, and to their children in turn. Eventually he gave more than two million dollars to the University and was a Regent from 1911 until immediately before his death. Among his gifts were the Wren Library and the Littlefield Fund for Southern History, Alice Littlefield Dormitory, in honor of his wife, and the paving of the "perip", the sidewalk that encircled the forty acre campus, as well as money for a great fountain honoring his own personal heroes. when he died in 1920, he willed his home to the University.
There was a simple, but serious, purpose in building a house like the Littlefield House. Such houses were overstated and some times bombastic, composed from hybrid sources, but they meant status in the community and proof of position to their owners. They were meant to impress. They were not the houses of the sophisticated New Englander building in the Shingle Style, although these too could be quite ostentatious. This house is of a character specifically Texan especially in its late use of Second Empire forms.
Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1964.
BIBLIOGRAPHY ON FILE IN THE NATIONAL REGISTER"