Texana Thursday: 3 Things You Might Not Know about Elijah E. Meyers

The Texas State Capitol in Austin (George Slaughter photo)

Every building tells stories about the people it is meant to serve, and the people who serve in it.

It also gives insight into the people who designed it. Elijah E. Meyers (1832-1909), the architect responsible for the Texas Capitol building in Austin (1881), enjoyed a long and interesting career. Many of the buildings he designed remain in use today. In addition to buildings in the United States, he also designed buildings in both Brazil and Mexico.

Three things you might not know about the Capitol architect are:

1. Meyers designed Capitol buildings for three states.

Texas was the second of three Capitol buildings that Meyers designed. He designed those in Michigan (1870) and Colorado (1885).

He was also responsible for designing several county courthouses in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio.

He designed a parliament building in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and an asylum in Mexico City, Mexico. Both have long since been demolished.

Elijah E. Meyers is the architect of the Texas Capitol (public domain photo)

2. Meyers used a pseudonym when he entered the design competition.

One might think that with a successful design for one capitol building, it would be easier to win the next design competition.

However, when Meyers entered the competition for the Texas Capitol, he used a pseudonym, “Tuebor.”

3. Meyers didn’t get to finish what he started in Texas.

As might be expected, Meyers made changes to his plans after he was hired in Austin. Perhaps the most notable of these changes was changing the dome from a square to round.

Apparently, some thought he was difficult to work with, and that he was slow in his follow-up efforts. In 1886, two years before the building was finished, the board supervising the project fired Meyers. However, his plans were used in finishing the project.

A century later, in the 1980s, the Capitol building underwent extensive renovations. Authorities consulted Meyers’s plans and notes when planning and executing those renovations.