The Mueller control tower as it appears today, with its colorful original exterior panels restored. Photo by James Rambin.
It was 2007 when I tried breaking into the defunct control tower at Austin’s former Robert Mueller Municipal Airport — you can call that “urban exploration” or “criminal trespassing” at your discretion, though at the age of 15 there’s admittedly not much distance between the two. My failed attempt arrived long after the site ceased its final civil aviation operations almost exactly 20 years ago in June 1999, and even a few years after the deal successfully hashed out in 2004 between national real estate firm Catellus and the City of Austin for the redevelopment of the ex-airport into what would soon become the massive urban community now simply known as Mueller.
A 2019 aerial view of the tower’s current location surrounded by development at Mueller. Image: Rick Pagniano
But the city’s adoption of the project’s master development agreement in 2004 certainly didn’t transform this enormous chunk of land overnight — so when I strolled onto the property like I owned the place one evening three years later with minor juvenile delinquency on the brain, the future neighborhood’s condition was still trapped somewhere between the ghost of an airport and a 700-acre pile of dirt.
A 2007 satellite view of the Mueller construction site surrounding the former airport’s demolished terminal and remaining control tower, with the tower itself circled in red. Image: Google Earth / Maxar Technologies
Despite the nine-story control tower’s striking midcentury design — which, along with the airport’s now-demolished terminal building, opened in 1961 as one of the most celebrated works by local modernist architects Arthur Fehr and Charles Granger — the structure wasn’t quite so much to look at when I illicitly visited back in 2007, the charming original blue-paneled color scheme hidden behind dull black plexiglass installed as part of a misguided ’80s attempt to refresh its appearance.
A view of the former Mueller control tower in 2007, near the beginning of construction on the project to transform the former airport into a master-planned community. Photo by James Rambin.
The area surrounding the structure was overgrown and fenced-off, and as I’d also quickly discover, the tower itself was completely bricked up at its entrance. Lacking a stepladder to access the handful of broken windows a floor or two off the ground, I dropped my brief career in professional infiltration and took these photos instead.
A closer look at the 2007 state of the Mueller control tower — overgrown, fenced off, covered in unattractive black plexiglass panels, and still kind of a looker all things considered! Photo by James Rambin.
But the tower stayed with me, and after its historic designation in 2018, the building was back on my mind in a big way. 2019 is an important year for Catellus, as the firm celebrates both the 20th anniversary of the airport’s closure and the 15th anniversary of the deal with the city that enabled the birth of the Mueller we know today, and the developer appears in the mood for a little wish fulfillment — long story short, 12 years after my attempted break-in at the tower, I got to walk right through the door.
A current view of the control tower, with its colorful exterior panels restored. Photo by James Rambin.
When Catellus’ executive vice president Greg Weaver — who appears to be the guy you ask about this sort of thing — offered me a tour, I knew we had to do it right. Though the developer’s work at restoring the exterior design of the structure to its original colorful appearance is highly visible, photos of its interior are relatively scarce online. Keeping that in mind, I brought along a friend — architecture photographer extraordinaire Patrick Wong — to document the inside of the tower and its incredible views of both the downtown Austin skyline and the growing neighborhood around it. Here’s what he came up with, plus a few photos of my own:
(Click each image for a larger view)
A wide view of the control tower’s main observation deck at the top of the structure, looking out towards downtown Austin. Though Catellus has cleaned and repainted most of the tower’s interior, this room has received the most attention at the moment. Photo by Patrick Wong.
Another view of the observation deck, looking out over the rest of Mueller. Photo by Patrick Wong.
Each floor of the tower below the main observation deck contains a small room, which Catellus VP Weaver thinks were likely used as offices for air traffic controllers and for other storage functions. Photo by Patrick Wong.
Another “office” room lower in the tower. Photo by James Rambin.
The tower’s ancient elevator, from the defunct B.F. Johnson Elevator Company, is pretty obviously not working at the moment. Photo by Patrick Wong.
A view from the exterior observation deck of the control tower looking towards downtown Austin. That ladder is unfortunately not at all safe to climb, or you know I would have done it. Photo by James Rambin.
Part of the tower’s top exterior deck, looking towards the University of Texas campus. Photo by James Rambin.
Looking towards downtown Austin from the exterior observation deck on the top floor of the control tower. Photo by Patrick Wong.
Looking out from the control tower’s top exterior deck towards Mueller’s many homes and the neighborhood’s “other tower” at Dell Children’s Medical Center. Photo by Patrick Wong.
One last view of the skyline from the tower — it’s kind of an interesting angle! Photo by James Rambin.
Though just getting inside was satisfying enough for me, the question of what Catellus plans to actually do with the tower remains unanswered. The developer is still coy on this subject despite years of uncertainty, but I’m happy to report a small sign of progress on that front. Back in 2014, Weaver told erstwhile Statesman transit guru Ben Wear it was “highly unlikely” the building would ever be opened to the public — now, the official line they’ve provided me is “Catellus is hopeful there will be public access to the tower in the future.”
Of course, that’s easier said than done, and nobody knows this better than the developers. Bringing the tower in line with modern innovations like ADA standards and fire codes would require the construction of a new elevator inside the structure, which would reduce its already dollhouse-like square footage to a level that might prevent anyone from actually enjoying whatever’s left. The building’s new historic status may ease some of those traditional code requirements to a degree, but modernizing the tower while maintaining the integrity of its original design remains a puzzle, to say the least, and Catellus isn’t sharing any more answers at the moment.
A full-length view of the control tower’s current state, including its restored colorful panels and amusing “door to nowhere” that previously connected the structure with the airport terminal built around it. Photo by James Rambin.
Perhaps the easiest future to imagine for the structure is its conversion to a private and very expensive residence, which is why it’s comforting to know the developers claim they’ve turned down many such offers — though they’re very friendly to the tower’s current population of barn owls — stating a desire to instead respect the tower’s roots in local history by keeping it a public amenity whether or not they can figure out how to actually get people inside the thing safely.
Another remaining complication is the empty land currently surrounding the tower, which is eventually slated for some kind of residential mixed-use or office building project. That structure will likely be designed to compliment the tower, or at least not overpower it in a way that would reduce its visibility from different vantage points within Mueller — a consideration Weaver says is definitely something the Catellus folks keep in mind as they move forward.
Though it’s happened on and off since the airport’s completion in 1961, Catellus revived the tradition of lighting the Mueller control tower with “NOEL” for the holidays in 2006. Image: MuellerAustin.com
Mateo Barnstone, who moved to Mueller in 2012, tells me the question of what’s next for the structure appears every couple of weeks among the neighborhood’s residents — “at a meeting, in a Facebook post, it always comes up,” he says. Along with a few restored buildings like the Browning Hangar and Mueller Central, the tower is the most visible remaining trace of Mueller’s unconventional past — and the transformation of the district over the last 15 years is so profound, Barnstone says some new neighbors aren’t even aware of that past at all.
“Some people come here understanding the history, and other people just move to Mueller because they bought a house — they liked the neighborhood, and some of them don’t even know it used to be an airport,” he says. “Those folks are the ones that always ask, ‘Hey, what’s the deal with that tower?’”
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