The Neill-Cochran House was built in 1855-56 by master builder Abner Cook, a Greek Revival residence originally constructed for Washington and Mary Hill, though financial hardship kept the Hills from ever moving in. Its earliest functional use was institutional rather than residential: the State of Texas leased the building in 1856 to house the Texas Institute for the Blind, using it for dormitory and classroom space, and after the Civil War Union forces occupied it as a hospital for wounded and convalescing troops during Reconstruction. The house returned to private residential use in 1876 when Colonel Andrew Neill purchased it; his wife Jennie made it a social gathering place for Austin politicians. In 1893 the Neills rented the home to Judge Thomas B. Cochran and his wife Bessie, who bought it outright in 1895 and expanded and modernized it as a family residence. This sequence of functions, family home, school dormitory, military hospital, and family home again, spans the property's first century. In 1958 the Cochran descendants sold the house to the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in Texas, which opened it to the public as a museum in 1962. Today the Neill-Cochran House functions as a historic house museum furnished with period antiques and decorative arts, offering self-guided and docent-led tours, educational programs, and rental space for community events, preserving both its architecture and its varied institutional and domestic past.