1893 Victorian mansion on the UT Austin campus, where students and staff describe piano music from the upper floor attributed to Alice Littlefield — best appreciated as an exterior walk-by from the public campus sidewalks.
302 W 24th St, Austin, TX 78705
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
House is owned by the University of Texas at Austin and used primarily for university functions and event space; interior public access is limited to UT-hosted events.
Access
Limited Access
Victorian mansion with stairs to the front porch and limited ADA access to upper floors.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1893 · Original Forty Acres of UT Austin · Victorian architecture by James Wahrenberger · Owned by the University of Texas at Austin since 1935 · Endowment for the educations of 29 Littlefield nieces and nephews
Major George Washington Littlefield (1842-1920) was a former Confederate cavalry officer who returned from the Civil War to become one of the largest cattle ranchers in Texas and a founder of the American National Bank in Austin. He served on the University of Texas Board of Regents and was a major philanthropic benefactor of the university. In 1893 he commissioned San Antonio architect James Wahrenberger to design a Victorian mansion on West 24th Street, immediately adjacent to the original Forty Acres of the UT campus.
The completed house featured two mismatched towers - one square, one round - rising above a multicolored slate roof, with elaborate cast-iron and millwork detail throughout the exterior. The interior was finished with hand-carved woodwork, period painted ceilings, and a grand staircase that became a focal point of family life.
Alice Tillar Littlefield was, according to multiple historical and university sources, an accomplished pianist, painter, and linguist. Because the Littlefields had no children of their own, they hosted as many as thirty of their nieces and nephews at a time during the UT school year and paid for the college educations of all twenty-nine of them. The house functioned for decades as both a private residence and an informal residence hall.
George Littlefield died in 1920 and Alice in 1935. Per the Littlefields' bequest, the house passed to the University of Texas, which has owned and operated it since. The Littlefield Dormitory, located one block away and named for Alice, opened in 1927.
The house remains in active university use today, hosting UT functions, donor events, and small academic gatherings. The exterior is visible at any time from the surrounding public sidewalks.
Sources
The Littlefield House has accumulated decades of ghost lore among UT students. The most often-repeated report - documented in Ghost City Tours, Paranormal Traveler, the Daily Texan student newspaper, and Austin.com - is the sound of a piano being played upstairs in the house late at night, in periods when no one is supposed to be inside. Alice Littlefield was a serious pianist in life, and witnesses uniformly identify the music as hers.
A woman in period dress is also commonly described, typically on the second floor near the tower rooms or at the windows facing 24th Street. Almost every witness, when asked, identifies the figure as Alice Littlefield without prompting. According to Paranormal Traveler, accounts include disembodied footsteps on the main staircase and faces glimpsed in upstairs windows from the public sidewalk.
A second strand of campus tradition treats Alice as a guardian figure rather than a frightening presence. Students at the nearby Littlefield Dormitory have for decades attributed averted accidents and small protective interventions to her watch over the residence hall that bears her family's name. The Daily Texan's 2023 "UT's Haunted Hotspots" coverage treats this as one of the campus's most enduring traditions.
A minority of accounts describe screams in the middle of the night and feelings of unease near the back of the first floor; these are less consistently reported and are framed in tour-operator sources as the more unsettling fringe of the Littlefield lore.
The Littlefield House's ghost lore is unusual among Austin sites for its consistency across generations of student reports and for the warmth with which the attributed spirit (Alice Littlefield) is described.
The Littlefield House is owned by the University of Texas at Austin and is used for university functions; interior access is limited to UT-hosted events. Visitors should appreciate the Victorian exterior, mismatched towers, and slate roof from the public sidewalks along West 24th Street and Whitis Avenue only.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
View the Littlefield House from public sidewalks on the UT Austin campus. The Victorian exterior, mismatched towers, and slate roof are visible at any time. Interior access requires affiliation with a UT-scheduled function.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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