A kind of literary movement is taking shape Saturday in downtown San Antonio.
The adobe brick house in which short story author O. Henry lived in 1885, writing three tales set in San Antonio, will be picked up and moved — again.
By Sunday, the little house will sit a block south of its current location on a parcel next door to the Casa Navarro State Historic Site.
Its spot at the corner of Dolorosa and South Laredo streets was never its original home, anyway. The historic house, now museum, has changed hands and moved almost as many times as its famous resident came up with pen names.
Built in 1855, the two-room house has had at least three addresses.
The Conservation Society of San Antonio paid $1 for the house in 1959, saving it from demolition, and moved it from 904 S. Presa St. to the grounds of the Lone Star Brewery.
In 1960, the brewery bought the house from the Conservation Society for $1. Later, new owners Mary Friedrich Rogers and Wallace Rogers maintained it as part of the Buckhorn Museum collection when the brewery closed in 1997.
The following year, David Carter and MLP Partnership bought the house and moved it to South Laredo Street, where it was restored and opened to the public as a museum.
Since then, the O. Henry House and Museum has sat next to the historic De La Garza House, which has stayed put since it was built in the early 19th century.
When Weston Urban acquired the Continental Hotel and Arana Building properties in 2022, and the two historic structures they enveloped, the developer first sought to move the De La Garza House closer to the O. Henry in order in order to make way for a multifamily project now underway.
Weston Urban later revised that plan and sought permission to restore the De La Garza House, letting it stay where it was built in 1775 and incorporating it into the development. But the author’s home would have to move.
Local officials and the state approved the move, but at the time, a new location had not been identified.
In May, Weston Urban transferred ownership of the O. Henry House to UTSA.
The university chose a new site for the house next to Casa Navarro in the same block as UTSA’s San Pedro II building, now under construction.
“UTSA is proud to take stewardship of the O. Henry House,” said Veronica Salazar, UTSA chief enterprise development officer and senior vice president for business affairs. “We are grateful for Weston Urban’s generous donation and its shared vision for reviving downtown San Antonio.”
As with the home of Texas patriot José Antonio Navarro, the author’s home will be overseen by the Texas Historical Commission. Other plans for the house have not been finalized, said a university spokeswoman.
“The O. Henry House provides a unique opportunity to advance historic preservation and contribute to placemaking efforts in the growing historical district developing adjacent to UTSA’s downtown presence,” Salazar said. “As part of our educational mission, we hope to share its learning opportunities with generations to come.”
The author, whose real name was William Sydney Porter, rented the house for $6 a month. He later moved to Austin and Houston.
While in San Antonio, he wrote three stories featuring the city, according to the university: A Fog in Santone, The Higher Abdication, and Hygeia at the Solito.
In addition to O. Henry, Porter also went by the pen names, S.H. Peters, James L. Bliss, T.B. Dowd and Howard Clark. He died in 1910 in New York.
Weston Urban’s Continental Hotel block project, which will include a 16-story apartment building situated between the rehabilitated hotel and the Arana buildings, is expected to be completed in late 2024.
