Central Austin’s Baffling Street Grid Is Entirely One Man’s Fault

Have you noticed that Austin’s street grid appears to exist outside the standard bounds of geometry? 12th Street jogs out at an angle once it crosses I-35, 28th Street is parallel to 27th Street — but not to 29th Street — and First Street intersects with Seventh Street (just past its intersection with Fifth Street). The man at fault for this jumble is William Sandusky, whose apparent hatred for orderly transportation has saddled central Austin with not one, but seven grids.

Austin is unique among Texas cities in that it was designed from . . .

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