The large, central-hall, two-story stone house is the lone residential and pre–Civil War survivor in the area. It now serves as headquarters of the Texas Historical Commission, which also utilizes the former Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church (1883) at 1510 N. Congress Avenue, renamed the Gethsemane Lutheran Church in 1934, as its library and archives. The congregation moved to north Austin in 1962. Leonidas D. and Martha Hill Carrington came to Austin from Mississippi in 1852 and opened a mercantile business on Congress Avenue. Frank M. Covert, owner of the first car dealership in Austin in 1909, purchased the house in 1870 and lived there until 1936.