State Bar Adaptation of Historic Downtown Austin Building Approved

A view of the structure in the 1890s. Image: Austin History Center

After 140 years, the Bartholomew-Robinson Building at 1415 Lavaca Street is bound for its biggest change since the ’90s. A successful vote this week from the City of Austin’s Historic Landmark Commission approved the Certificate of Appropriateness for an adaptation to the historic structure planned by the 0.14-acre property’s new owners at the State Bar of Texas, a new four-story addition situated at the south end of the building which would contain workspace for visiting lawyers alongside additional meeting space suitable for conferences and continuing education training.

An updated view of the State Bar’s plan for the building, with a new addition at the southern end of the site alongside additional preservation work on the existing historic building. Image: The Lawrence Group

Back in 2021, the State Bar purchased the corner property, located at the southeast corner of West 15th and Lavaca Streets directly next door to the organization’s main headquarters, as part of its resistance to a hotel concept for the building proposed in 2020 by Houston-based developers William Franks and Trend Hospitality LP. The plan would have raised a 12-story Motto by Hilton hotel over the original historic structure, a design thoroughly trashed by the Historic Landmark Commission due to its great increase in height. This strong pushback along with the changing economy of the pandemic prompted the hotel developers to pull out, and this new approach to adapting the historic building has seen a much friendlier reception.

A rendering of the defunct 2020 proposal for a hotel tower rising over the historic structure. Image: MCS

At its meeting on Wednesday earlier this week, the Historic Landmark Commission heard from Luma Jaffar, managing principal for the project’s architects at the Austin offices of the Lawrence Group. The most notable aspect of her presentation to us was just how many Frankenstein-like modifications to this building we’ve seen over the years — after building a stone house at the corner in 1883 for the whopping sum of $600, Eugene Bartholomew sold the property to John and Fannie Wayland, who built a feed store essentially surrounding that original stone house in 1887, giving the structure its signature three turret-like decorative towers designed in the locally unusual Second Empire architectural style. The remains of that first 1883 stone house still lurk within the walls of the current structure, and the Lawrence Group’s plans for the addition and rehabilitation will make one of those original walls more visible inside the building on its eastern face.

The area outlined with a red dotted line is where the new addition will be constructed. Image: The Lawrence Group

Jaffar’s presentation was also a good reminder that the ornamental towers at three corners of the structure’s roof aren’t original, having been removed from the structure sometime before 1935. An extensive renovation of the building in the mid-1990s carried out by the Texas Osteopathic Medical Association before using the building as its headquarters added replicas of those original towers made of fiberglass, which is what’s there now — the Lawrence Group design for the site’s renovation plans to reconstruct the turrets out of more historically accurate materials.

A view of the building in the 1970s, during the many decades when its well-known corner turrets had been removed. What the hell is the Jeanery? Image: The Lawrence Group / Austin History Center

The vote to approve the Certificate of Appropriateness for the State Bar’s plan passed with seven votes in favor. Commissioner JuanRaymon Rubio cast the only vote against, arguing that the removal of the structure’s southern facade was unacceptable.

Not to say that the hotel design was great, but at least it preserved a little bit more of those walls . . . I don’t think this should be a model for modifying any City of Austin landmarks.

— JuanRaymon Rubio, Historic Landmark Commission

It’s interesting to see the largely positive reception of this project compared with the hotel planned here three years ago. It would be easy to suggest that the Commission is simply spooked by taller buildings — and yeah, that’s often true — but based on these public hearings alone, in this case the Lawrence Group’s historic preservation practices seem much more sophisticated than the earlier hotel proposal, which didn’t seem to take quite the same care in its materials use and stewardship of the original structural elements in the historic building. As downtown stakeholders we would have rather seen a more active use like a hotel at this site rather than an addition serving the more inward-facing needs of the State Bar, but as preservation advocates we’re glad this building appears to be joining the 21st century in a historically sensitive way. It’s a complicated case, but let’s make the bottom line simple: We wish it was taller.