Austin Council approves historic zoning for Richard Overton’s home

Nearly a year after Richard Overton took his final breath at a rehabilitation facility in East Austin last December, his final wish to turn his home of more than 70 years into a museum is all but a done deal.

The Austin City Council on Thursday approved historic zoning for Overton’s home at 2011 Hamilton Ave. (also known as Richard Overton Avenue), a move that will allow his relatives to fix up the property, and find funding to open the house to tours.

Volma Overton Jr., Richard Overton’s cousin, said he’s thrilled to have finally made it through a council vote, after having gone before the Historic Landmark Commission multiple times, each of which resulted in unanimous votes to rezone the property.

Historic Preservation Board member Witt Featherston said the Overton House breezed through the board’s process. Each time Overton Jr. showed up to discuss the case over the past year, no one spoke against it.

Featherston said the house won’t be found in any architectural textbooks, but it’s a great example of the time, well-preserved and maintained, and, as a museum, will have significant community value.

“I think that in his later years the community realized what a cultural asset he was as a person,” Featherston said. “People don't come out if they agree with you, it’s only if they are going to get angry and worked up that they will raise their fists. You have to infer that since no one's here to speak against it, everyone is for it, and I think it is a safe bet here.”

Overton Jr. said Overton, who died last year, wanted his home to become a museum so he could share it with all the people who helped him and supported him in the final years of his life, allowing him to stay there until his last moments on earth.

“The inside of the house, nothing has changed since Richard passed, really no one has been in the house except me,” Overton Jr. said. “It still needs some overall fixing up, and hopefully I can request funding for that after it has historic designation.”

Council Member Natasha Harper-Madison, in whose district Overton’s house stands, said Overton watched decades go by from his front porch, including the civil rights movement, the end of legal segregation and the election of the country’s first black president.

“In his latter years his easygoing durability made him a household name, a jet setter who flew to Washington to meet that very same black president. But he never let it go to his head,” she said. “Despite his celebrity he lived a simple life smoking cigars and drinking whiskey and sitting on his porch on the east side, always welcoming any visitor, no matter who they were. He was a physical link to the history of our nation and our city. And now that he's gone, his house is our physical link to him.”

The details of how the museum would be run haven't been worked out yet, but Overton Jr. said he hopes Huston-Tillotson University and the Austin Community College District will be involved.

“It's a blessing to have this as something that will happen just like he wanted to,” Overton Jr. said.