The W Hotel & Residences looms disapprovingly over the Hobby Building, now vacated and fenced off. Image: Caleb Pritchard
It’s a remarkable work of 1980s postmodern architecture, and it’s also full of rats. Cobble those two truths together and you’ve got a nearly complete understanding of the William P. Hobby, Jr. State Office Building at 333 Guadalupe Street, a downtown structure of great ambition and eclectic design widely disliked by its tenants anyway — and this month, with fences recently raised around the now-vacant office complex, it’s looking like the Hobby Building is headed for the graveyard of Austin’s history.
Owned by the State of Texas since 1990, this block-sized collection of three distinct buildings once hosted a laundry list of state agencies that have now relocated to new digs in the George H.W. Bush Building of the Capitol Complex development, and we’re certain every employee is over the moon — years of deferred maintenance and that little rat problem made the Hobby a sort of catchall punching bag synonymous with crumbling state infrastructure, described with uncommon candor by various public figures as a “disgrace,” an “embarrassment,” and a “joke.” Selling the site for its massive private redevelopment potential rather than spending tens of millions to rehabilitate the facility has been a state priority for years, and now that all its long-suffering tenants are relocated it’s likely the building will change hands soon, with a pending demolition essentially inevitable.
This pueblo-inspired facade kinda goes, right? Image: Wikimedia Commons
Will anyone miss it? Yeah, unfortunately, we will. It’s not that we haven’t made a few jokes at the building’s expense before — the obvious uncharitable gag is that it’s called the Hobby Building because it looks like it was designed by someone for whom architecture wasn’t a full-time job — but like a perpetually cheerful three-legged dog, somewhere along the way we came around to the weirdness of the project, looking past its neglected condition to see the genuinely creative architectural inspirations shaping the structure in the context of 1980s Austin.
The Hobby Building’s actually sort of iconic red facade stands out in this postcard of the Austin skyline dating back to the late 80s or early 90s. Image courtesy of Kevin Lehnhardt / Photo by John Elk III.
Originally known as Republic Plaza, developers Watson-Casey Companies hired different architecture firms to design each of the three towers in the complex, and the combined grab-bag effect is pure postmodernism — a frequently controversial style that gets less respect than previous design movements, but is now old enough for many shining examples to deserve genuine historic protection.
The first and tallest tower, its glass curtain wall lined with distinct red mullions, is the work of Dallas firm Rossetti Associates. The shorter stucco building facing Guadalupe Street is crafted in a Santa Fe-esque “Pueblo Revival” style by Austin firm Holt-Fatter-Scott, which also supervised the design of the whole complex. The third tower at the northeast corner of the tract is a more austere concrete structure by Toronto-based architects WZMH, perhaps best known for that city’s iconic CN Tower.
Austin American-Statesman architecture critic Michael McCullar takes on Republic Plaza after its completion in 1986, famously comparing its plaza fountain to a punctured radiator. Remember when we hired architecture critics? Image: Austin History Center
At the time of its completion in 1986, Republic Plaza’s maximum height of 13 floors made it one of the most prominent elements of Austin’s southern skyline, which seems downright quaint these days — it’s now nearly invisible from most views of downtown. But the design of the site was, at least for its era, uncommonly focused on the effect of the buildings at street level, with the project expected as one of many planned additions to the Warehouse District intended to create a more walkable and active downtown near Republic Square. (You’ll notice the grand entrance of the Hobby Building is oriented on a diagonal, opening to the adjacent public square.)
Republic Plaza, as seen from Republic Square in 1990. Image: Texas Monthly
A view of the art museum once planned for the tract directly west of the Hobby site now being developed as the Republic tower. Image: Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates
These plans, which included a new Laguna Gloria art museum designed by famed architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, deflated after the 1980s Savings and Loan Crisis — and once the state bought the complex out of foreclosure, slapped a new name on it, and stopped caring about its future, the building’s fate was pretty much sealed. It’s no wonder everyone wants it gone these days, but at the time the structure represented a fresh new direction for downtown that was never quite realized. As we stare down the possibility of another recession, the death and life of the Hobby Building might be cause for a little reflection — 30 or 40 years from now, which of Austin’s shiny new buildings could face the same undignified end?
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