Built in 1853 and designed by the noted architect Abner Cook, this stately home has a two-story portico with paired columns.The house was built for Austin banker JohnMilton Swisher, and originally stood in the 400 block of San Antonio Street near downtown Austin.
Dr. Zachary Scott, (Longtime Chief of Staff at Brackenridge Hospital) found the house in deteriorated condition in the 1920’s. So he and his wife Ruth purchasedit and moved it to Sweetbrush Drive in the Old Enfield neighborhood of Austin around 1928. Later the home was occupied by their son noted actor Zachary Scott. A major renovation of the home occured in the 1930s which was directed by noted architect Sam Gideon, who hired Peter Mansbendel to execute multiple carvings in the home. The actor Zachary Scott, was born in Austin in 1914 and was a distant cousin of George Washington, his father was a well known physician and his grandfather was a successful cattle rancher. Scott intended to be a doctor like his father, but after attending the University of Texas for a while, he decided to switch to acting. He signed on as a cabin boy on a freighter whichtook him to England where he acted in repertory theatre for a while, before he returned to Austin and began acting in local theater.
Alfred Lunt discovered Scott in Texas and convinced him to move to New York City where he appeared on Broadway. Jack Warner of Warner Brothers Studio saw him in a performance and signed him to appear in a movie, The Mask of Dimitrios, in 1944. Scott went on to star in over 70 films, including such movies as The Southerner, The Unfaithful, Cass Timberlane, Flamingo Road, Flaxy Martin, Guilty Bystander, Wings of Danger, and Shadow on the Wall, opposite Nancy Davis Reagan and Ann Sothern. He later starred in Luis Buñuel’s “The Young One” before he passed away of a brain tumor at the age of 51 in 1965.
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