Nine men were legally hanged at the 1876 fortress jail at 11th and Brazos; the building that replaced it in 1933 still produces unexplained footsteps for TxDOT employees after dark.
125 E 11th St, Austin, TX 78701
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
The Dewitt C. Greer Building is a state government office building. The exterior and grounds are publicly accessible. Interior access is a state office; not a tourist venue.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Downtown Austin government district; paved sidewalks and public grounds around the 1933 building.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1876 · National Register of Historic Places (Greer Building, 1998) · Site of nine legal hangings, 1879–1918 · Held John Wesley Hardin and John Ringo · Held O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) on federal charges · Longest-operating county execution site in Travis County history
The 1876 Travis County Jail at 11th and Brazos Streets was built for $100,000 as a fortress: two-story, castle-style construction with walls two feet of solid stone, designed to be Austin's secure long-term detention facility for the county. It served in that capacity for more than five decades.
The jail held nine men who were legally executed on the premises. Taylor Ake, 18, was hanged August 22, 1879, for rape — the first execution. Ed Nichols, 21, followed on January 12, 1894. William Eugene Burt was hanged on May 27, 1898. Sam Watrus was executed October 27, 1899; Jim Davidson, November 24, 1899; Henry Williams, May 2, 1904; John Henry, 1912; Henry Brook, 1913. Hubert Harvey, 34, was the last, executed August 23, 1918, for fatally stabbing an Austin man on Halloween 1916.
The jail's more celebrated non-executed inmates included John Wesley Hardin, Texas's deadliest 19th-century outlaw, who was held there before transfer to the state prison in Huntsville following his 1877 conviction. John Ringo shared the facility briefly. William Sydney Porter — who published under the name O. Henry — was booked there on federal bank embezzlement charges in 1898.
The jail was demolished in the early 1930s and replaced by the Dewitt C. Greer State Highway Building, designed by San Antonio architect Carleton Adams and completed in summer 1933 at a cost of $455,151.74. The eight-story structure has served as TxDOT headquarters since opening. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.
Sources
The paranormal reputation of the Dewitt C. Greer Building was formally acknowledged in the October 2003 issue of TxDOT's own newsletter, Transportation News, in an article titled 'The Ghosts of Greer' by editor Mike Cox. The article documented employee reports of mysterious footsteps and strange noises in the large meeting room and on the eighth floor, occurring when the building was supposed to be empty at night.
Cox's piece identified Hubert Harvey, 34 — the last of nine men hanged at the Travis County Jail that previously occupied the site — as the most likely source of the activity. Harvey was executed August 23, 1918, for fatally stabbing a young Austin man on Halloween 1916. He had spent years in the jail awaiting execution, and the suggestion of his remaining presence is grounded in the specificity of the execution history rather than generic haunted-jail folklore.
Additional accounts reference blood-smeared walls and unexplained phenomena on certain floors, though those details appear in paranormal reporting rather than the official TxDOT documentation. The building's 1933 construction on the precise footprint of a jail where nine executions occurred over four decades provides the historical density that makes the Greer Building unusual among Austin's alleged haunted sites: the dark history is thoroughly documented in public records, and the institutional acknowledgment of the paranormal reports is in writing.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
The Dewitt C. Greer State Highway Building stands at the southwest corner of 11th and Brazos Streets, on the exact site of the 1876 Travis County Jail where nine men were hanged. The castle-like stone jail was demolished in the early 1930s; the Greer Building replaced it in 1933. A historical marker notes the site's connections to the jail, John Wesley Hardin, and O. Henry.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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