Before he was O. Henry, he was William Sydney Porter — bank teller, draftsman and Austin bon vivant, living in a modest Queen Anne cottage on East 5th Street. That cottage is now the O. Henry Museum, a free downtown gem preserving the rooms where America’s master of the surprise ending spent his happiest years (1893-95).
Inside: Porter’s writing desk, his Austin newspaper The Rolling Stone’s mischief, and exhibitions on the short story craft he reinvented. The museum shares its grounds with the Joseph and Susanna Dickinson Hannig Museum in Brush Square — together, a two-cottage crash course in 19th-century Austin.
And each May, the museum hosts the O. Henry Pun-Off World Championships — because the man who wrote “The Gift of the Magi” would have wanted the last laugh.
