Jasper Newton Preston: Pioneer Architect of Texas and California (1832–1922)
Revised by: Brett J. Derbes
Published: May 1, 1995
Updated: June 24, 2023
Jasper Newton Preston, architect, was born in Wayne County, New York, on October 5, 1832, to Samuel and Rebecca Sprague Preston. When he was a boy his family moved in the winter of 1834 to Lansing, Michigan, and settled in Oneida Township, where his parents organized the Oneida Presbyterian Church. As a young man Preston studied architecture at the Vermontville Academy and worked as a draftsman. He married Janet Johnston of Cornwall, Ontario, Canada, in 1857 and by 1870 the couple had four daughters and two sons, including a pair of twins. Tragically, three children passed away in 1870 followed by an infant in 1872. In 1875 he moved to Austin, one of the first professional architects to do so.
Shortly after his arrival in Austin, Preston met Frederick Ruffini and began a partnership that commissioned the First Baptist Church of Waco, the Cotton Exchange building at Galveston, and the Williamson County Courthouse in Georgetown. Preston's family joined him in Austin two years later in September 1877, and his partnership with Ruffini ended acrimoniously the following year after the courthouse project. Their strained relationship and public disagreements disrupted the opportunity for either of them to add the new Texas State Capitol as a signal work of their career. Preston was selected by the original commissioners as supervising architect for the state project, while Ruffini anonymously submitted proposed designs for the Capitol competition. In April 1881 the disagreements with Ruffini resurfaced as charges of corruption against Preston related to the Williamson County Courthouse project. The Capitol Building Commission heard testimony from a contractor on April 12, 1881, that resulted in Preston resigning from his position.
Nonetheless, during the ten or eleven years that Preston practiced in Texas he designed two important buildings-the three-story Venetian Gothic palazzo for the Walter Tips Hardware Company (1877) on Congress Avenue, now restored and adapted as the headquarters of the Franklin Savings Association; and the Driskill Hotel (1886), a Richardsonian Romanesque structure on Sixth Street, which has also been restored and is still in use as a hotel. Preston also designed the rather stark, mansard-roofed Allen Hall (1881, razed) for Tillotson Institute (now Huston-Tillotson College). The J. W. Driskill house (1881, razed) was the largest and most elaborate of the houses he designed in Austin. By 1883 he had taken his son, Samuel A. J. Preston, into partnership, and their firm opened an office in San Antonio in the Groos and Company Bank building.
In 1887 both Preston and his son moved to Los Angeles, where they collaborated on the new Los Angeles County Courthouse. Their other projects included commercial structures, courthouses, schools, public buildings, and private residences. Samuel caught typhoid fever and passed away on August 17, 1889, but Preston continued his practice by partnering with regional architects on projects. In 1892 he was elected president of the Southern California Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and served in that capacity for several years. In 1907 the organization passed a unanimous motion to make Preston a life member. His wife died in 1911 and he relocated to the Masonic Home for Adults in Union City. Preston passed away on December 8, 1922, and was buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles.
Bibliography:
Bob Brinkman and Dan K. Utley, "A Name on the Cornerstone: The Landmark Texas Architecture of Jasper Newton Preston" Southwestern Historical Quarterly 110 (July 2006): 1-37; Daily Democratic Statesman, October 27, 1875; Los Angeles Daily Herald, June 5, 1887; Roxanne Williamson, Victorian Architecture in Texas (M.A. thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 1967). Henry F. and Elsie R. Withey, Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased) (Los Angeles: New Age, 1956).
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Roxanne Williamson Revised by Brett J. Derbes, “Preston, Jasper Newton,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/preston-jasper-n.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
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- May 1, 1995
- June 24, 2023
