Hey, Does Anybody Want To Lease This Historic Church in Downtown Austin?

Image: Central Christian Church

The historic Central Christian Church located at 1110 Guadalupe Street, a landmark work of Neo-Romanesque architecture dating back to 1929, is up for grabs in downtown Austin. Well, kinda.

Image: Central Christian Church

We were surprised to see a listing for the building recently hit the local market, offering the approximately one-acre church property for lease at a mere $5,500 a month — that’s admittedly a bit more than the average downtown rent, but for your money you’re getting an impressive amount of space in the deal, including the sanctuary, classrooms, library, and other office space.

But there’s a catch, or even a few catches, to this eyebrow-raising listing, the first being that the owners are looking for another church to lease the space — nobody’s looking to convert this landmark building into tech offices or a rock climbing gym or anything like that, far as we can tell. The other condition of the lease is that the existing Central Christian congregation still plans to use the building under a shared space agreement, so you’re not even evicting the existing flock if you take the deal.

With these conditions in mind, it doesn’t sound like much is changing for the historic building itself, which became a state landmark in 1985 and hit the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. Designed by local architects Robert Leon White and Samuel Vosper in 1929, Central Christian now represents one of the oldest congregations in the city, and hopefully the extra cash from this lease agreement will keep them in their space for years to come.

Image: Central Christian Church

But while we’re here, the actual listing of the church means we’ve suddenly got better photos of the building and its ornate interior, which underwent an extensive restoration back in 2010. There’s even a Matterport tour of the structure now available, which if you troll around enough real estate listings in Austin you’ll know is the best way to get a detailed 3D view of a building. If you’ve got some friends in need of a shiny new (but actually nearly a century old) church, please pass this listing their way — the rest of you can just enjoy the pictures.