Must Visit Museums in San Antonio – O. Henry House Museum | Evans Road CBD Store

San Antonio, TX 78207, United States

The O. Henry House Museum is a historic house museum located in San Antonio, Texas. It is named for the American writer, William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry who lived in the house in 1885.

• The Museum 

The O. Henry House museum was initially built by John Kush, a German settler in 1855. The house, built in adobe brick, was originally located at 904 South Presa street. In the early 1880s, William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry moved to San Antonio and rented the two room house for $6 a month. Porter lived here from 1885 to 1886. In 1959, the San Antonio Conservation Society, working with both the Lone Star Brewing Company and the descendants of John Kush, the original owner, purchased the home for a symbolic one dollar. 

This included the responsibility of moving the home within 60 days to save it from demolition. It was moved to the location of the Lone Star Brewing Company where it was part of the Buckhorn museum collection until the breweries closure in 1997. In 1998, David Carter and the MLP partnership moved the house once more, this time to its present location at the corner of Dolorosa and Laredo Street in Downtown San Antonio. It re-opened as a museum in 1999.

• O. Henry And His Works

Henry’s stories frequently have surprise endings. In his day he was called the American answer to Guy de Maupassant. While both authors wrote plot twist endings, O. Henry’s stories were considerably more playful, and are also known for their witty narration.

Most of O. Henry’s stories are set in his own time, the early 20th century. Many take place in New York City and deal for the most part with ordinary people: policemen, waitresses, etc.

Henry’s work is wide-ranging, and his characters can be found roaming the cattle-lands of Texas, exploring the art of the con-man, or investigating the tensions of class and wealth in turn-of-the-century New York. O. Henry had an inimitable hand for isolating some element of society and describing it with an incredible economy and grace of language. 

Some of his best and least-known work is contained in Cabbages and Kings, a series of stories each of which explores some individual aspect of life in a paralytically sleepy Central American town, while advancing some aspect of the larger plot and relating back one to another.