The Arno Nowotny Building at MLK & I35, immediately north of the Erwin event center, was built in 1856 (the Blind Asylum), and briefly housed General George Custer and his wife during the Reconstruction period (1865–1866). One early (undated) picture of the building shows the one tall Sabal mexicana, but no other palms in the flowerbeds in front of the building. [Original image from the Arno Nowotny Building web page modified by Bob Harms.]
The University of Texas acquired this property, known as little Campus, in 1926.
One can only suspect that the 8 large Sabal mexicana palms to the south side of the house represent recruitment of that original palm. Three of these are over 10 feet tall, and are currently producing fruit. One corner of the garden area has a clump of four 'adjoined' palms, 2' – 3' – 5' – 10' trunks (i.e., half of the total large palms). All but one of the large palms were on the west side of the garden, away from I-35. The area is currently ringed by well-manicured hedges, and all but one of the 16 small palm volunteer seedlings I noted in 2002 were coming up through the hedges, and mostly trimmed off, with ragged tops. Virtually all were in spots that would have received fruits via rain runoff (i.e., gravity flow). An exceptionally large trunkless palm, 7', is in a garden bed immediately adjacent to the MLK sidewalk, some 150' NW of the tall palm. Otherwise all smaller volunteers are in the immediate garden on the southwest corner of the house.
Several of the large volunteer Sabal mexicana palms some half-mile directly downhill of the Little Campus are very likely the progeny of the original tall palm.