Here’s How the State Bar Plans to Adapt This Historic Downtown Building

An illustration of the Bartholomew-Robinson Building, at the time owned by grocer John Wayland, from an 1887 edition of the Austin American-Statesman. The scale seems to be a little off, but otherwise it’s pretty accurate! Image: Austin History Center

The long saga of the Bartholomew-Robinson Building at 1415 Lavaca Street could find its next gear this summer, as the property’s new owners at the State Bar of Texas move forward with plans to expand its headquarters, currently located next door, into the historic 1880s building at the southeast corner of West 15th and Lavaca Streets in downtown Austin a stone’s throw from the State Capitol grounds. Here’s how the organization describes its vision — a sort of oasis for lawyers, if you will:

The bar’s plans include preserving and restoring the historic structure and constructing a new, three-story building on the same property.

The new building would include a large theater and mezzanine on the a first floor, smaller conference rooms and workspaces on the second floor, and a meeting space and outdoor reception area on the third floor overlooking the Texas Capitol. The building would provide workspace for lawyers visiting downtown Austin as well as space for the State Bar and other legal groups to host continuing legal education, conferences, and other meetings.

— State Bar of Texas

Loyal readers might recall that back in the sunny pre-pandemic early months of 2020, Houston-area developers William Franks and Trend Hospitality LP proposed a project that would adapt the historic building, at the time recently vacated as office space for the Texas Osteopathic Medical Association, into the base of a 12-story, 159-room Hilton hotel tower — Austin’s Historic Landmark Commission repeatedly expressed what you might diplomatically describe as a “strong dislike” for the plan, and the State Bar of Texas moved forward with buying the property for $3.25 million in 2021 with at least a heavily implied if not explicitly stated goal of putting the brakes on it.

Here’s what the plan for a Motto by Hilton hotel over the historic building looked like back in 2020. The Historic Landmark Commission and the State Bar basically assembled like Voltron to oppose this project, so now we’re looking at a slightly more scaled-back adaptation for the building. Image: MCS

Even without the hotel, this is an old building just the same, and it’s going to take a lot of work to modernize this roughly 137-year-old structure into a suitable space for its new owners. The project is expected to hit the Architectural Review Committee of the Historic Landmark Commission next month, but thanks to an RFQ for construction management recently issued by the State Bar, we’ve got a sneak peek of how the organization hopes to adapt the space with a design from architects Lawrence Group:

Image: Lawrence Group / State Bar of Texas

If you’re familiar with the Bartholomew-Robinson Building, it’s easy to see the philosophy of this design. The new addition is located at the back half of the structure closer to the Texas Chili Parlor, which you’ll notice is currently just an empty shell around an open-air space — it’s probably easy to argue that’s the place to build.

https://www.facebook.com/AustinHistoryCenter/photos/a.275009182541265/2717629344945891/?type=3&ref=embed_post

You can see from the rendering that there’s an effort to place the additions at the rear of the site, to try and keep the view of the original building and its turrets from the corner as unchanged as possible, since preservation best practices for adaptive reuse recommend a strong distinction between the original building and anything new. Remember, the Historic Landmark Commission’s major objection to the previous hotel plan was that its scale overwhelmed the original building — needless to say, we’ll be interested to see how this new take on updating the structure is received next month.