{"id":331016,"date":"2026-06-10T19:04:07","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/331016\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T19:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T19:04:07","slug":"east-austins-irene-hill-thompson-house-becomes-city-landmark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/331016\/","title":{"rendered":"East Austin&#8217;s Irene Hill-Thompson House becomes city landmark"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAustin City Council established the Irene Hill-Thompson House in East Austin as a city landmark at the May 28 council meeting, according to a news release from<a href=\"https:\/\/www.preservationaustin.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Preservation Austin.<\/a> Marilynn Poole Webb, homeowner and Irene Hill-Thompson\u2019s niece, partnered with Preservation Austin to prepare and present the nomination.<\/p>\n<p>The single-story mid-century modern residence, built in 1963 with a wood frame, represents a legacy of early architecture and civic leadership in Austin\u2019s only historic district exclusively honoring Black heritage.<\/p>\n<p>The history<\/p>\n<p>The Irene Hill-Thompson House was designed by John S. Chase, the first Black student to enroll at The University of Texas at Austin, for Irene Hill-Thompson, a civic leader from the 1940s to the mid 2000s. She was active in local and state politics, known for opening her home to host political fundraisers, meetings and more.<\/p>\n<p>Hill-Thompson was married to Oscar Thompson, the first Black student to graduate from The University of Texas at Austin. The Irene Hill-Thompson House is also one of two original residential designs from Chase in the Austin area, according to the home\u2019s historic zoning application.<\/p>\n<p>The context<\/p>\n<p>Preservation Austin has several advocacy priorities, one of which is to designate underrepresented heritage sites, according to the news release. The nonprofit\u2019s goal is to highlight Mexican Americans, the LGBTQ+ community, women and more to provide an accurate account of the city\u2019s diverse history and culture.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen only 16% of our landmarks reflect Black and Brown contributions, each designation is an act of correction,\u201d Miriam Conner, board president of Preservation Austin, said in a news release. \u201cWe preserve these places because erasure has consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Austin City Council established the Irene Hill-Thompson House in East Austin as a city landmark at the May&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":331017,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,2924,3340,118303,17017,83334],"class_list":["post-331016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-east-austin","tag-historic-landmark","tag-irene-hill-thompson-house","tag-landmark","tag-preservation-austin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331016"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331016\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331017"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}