User:DatraxMada/Monroe M. Shipe

Colonel Monroe Martin Shipe was an American real estate developer and streetcar network operator who developed the "whites only" streetcar suburb of Hyde Park in Austin, Texas and founded the Austin Rapid Transit Railway Company (eventually the predecessor to Austin's current transit agency, Capital Metropolitan Transportation Authority).

Shipe moved to Austin in the 1880s from Abilene, Kansas with $830. Within a few years with that money, he bought an undeveloped area of land north of town, convinced the City Council to give him a franchise to run electric streetcars, and borrowed $62,500 to fund five miles of rail running from downtown to his plot of land which he named Hyde Park. His streetcar, the Austin Electric Railway Company, began running in February, 1891.

Hyde Park
Missouri, Kansas and Texas Land and Town Company electric streetcar

Austin Rapid Transit Railway Company
electric streetcars Austin Rapid Transit Railway Company

Children
Daughter Clotilde Shipe married Peter Mansbendel.

Buildings in Hyde Park

 * Peter and Clotilde Shipe Mansbendel House
 * Oliphant–Walker House
 * Smith–Marcuse–Lowry House
 * Hildreth–Flanagan–Heierman House
 * Elisabet Ney Museum
 * Frank M. and Annie G. Covert House
 * Page–Gilbert House
 * Col. Monroe M. Shipe House