General Land Office Building

The General Land Office Building in Austin, Texas is the oldest surviving state government office building in the city, and the first building designed by a university-trained architect (German architect Christoph Conrad Stremme). The building features a dramatic medieval castle style known as Rundbogenstil, or "rounded arch" around the windows and doors. There is also a Norman style influence in the castle-like parapets. The exterior walls are limestone rubble smoothed over with stucco and scored to simulate cut stone blocks. The Land Office was completed in 1857 on the southeast corner of the Texas State Capitol grounds. The building counted among its employees William Sidney Porter, later to become famous as short-story writer O....