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History of the Byrne-Reed House
Byrne-Reed House, circa 1910
Built more than a century ago, the Byrne-Reed House reflects a Texas vernacular style that combines popular architectural trends of the period: Mission-style terracotta roof tiles; Richardsonian-Romanesque arches, and Prairie-style porches. Its construction incorporated locally produced materials: Elgin brick, limestone from nearby quarries, ironwork fashioned in a downtown foundry, and native Texas pine.
The house's presence in an early Austin neighborhood and just blocks from the Texas Capitol links it and its residents to state and local history. Located at Rio Grande and what was North Street (now 15th), the Byrne-Reed House perched on the northernmost boundary of the original city plan. Edmund and Ellen Sneed Byrne purchased the property on October 10, 1905, from William Bohn, partner in Bohn Brothers Department Store on Congress Avenue and an entrepreneur who also bought and sold Austin real estate during this period. The deed lists the original address as 1404 Rio Grande and notes "improvements" on the property, likely referring to a small house on the back portion of the lot reflected in the 1900 Sanborn fire insurance 
map.
The Byrnes constructed a larger house on the lot in 1906 or 1907 and moved from Fairview Park, a community just south of the Colorado River, perhaps to be closer to the University of Texas where their children Grace and Thomas both attended school.
Edmund and Ellen Byrne were, according to an article in the daily paper announcing their 1889 wedding, well known and "universally beloved." Byrne, commented the Daily Statesman reporter who covered the affair, "is popular with everybody who knows him, for to know him is to love him." Ellen Sneed grew up in Austin, the granddaughter of the influential Judge Sebron Graham Sneed and met Byrne sometime after he moved from Galveston in the 1880s and established himself as a successful cotton buyer.
When Ellen Byrne died in 1915, Edmund sold the house and moved to Fort Worth to be close to his then-married daughter; his son Thomas founded a construction company in 1923 that has, for more than eighty years, helped build and restore major office centers and cultural institutions in cities across Texas.
The next family to occupy the house on Rio Grande, the Reeds, shared a strong connection to the Texas cotton industry. David Cleveland Reed started his business career in Austin as a cotton buyer and exporter with E. H. Perry & Company, the leading export firm in the city. He and his wife, Laura Moses, moved to Austin just a year before the sale of 1410 Rio Grande.
Like his brother Malcolm, Dave became a prominent civic leader as well as a widely known and successful businessman in Austin, with interests ranging from cattle ranches and oil development to a partnership in the Driskill Hotel. He served on the Austin school board, on the first city council under the city manager form of government, and on the board of Texas Christian University. When Dave died tragically in a Virginia plane crash in 1948, Representative Lyndon B. Johnson wired the widow to express his shock and sorrow. "The nation never had a better citizen and I never had a better friend," he wrote.