Though it’s not the only mysterious tiny tower in Austin, the historic downtown structure known as Buford Tower is certainly our most visible, standing six floors at the intersection of West Cesar Chavez and Colorado Streets on the shores of Lady Bird Lake. Originally built in 1930 and used as a drill facility for the city’s fire department until its…
downtown austin
Keep Your Meetings Local With 10 Extremely Austin Zoom Backgrounds
Unless you already worked from home, in which case we salute you, this whole coronavirus pandemic thing is shaking up your daily routine. For reasons unknown, the world has collectively agreed to use videoconferencing software Zoom for conducting business while distancing ourselves socially, and one nice feature those folks give us is the ability to load…
Cocktails to Go Could Save Your Favorite Bar. Texas Isn’t There Yet.
The allegedly business-friendly, freedom-minded inclinations of the Texan government fall apart pretty fast when you take stock of our state’s alcohol regulations, a bizarrely complex assortment of laws dating back to Prohibition and informed by, no joke, the 1930s public policy research of a eugenicist think tank. We got a nice reminder of these laws and their general backwards-assedness earlier this month, when…
See the City’s Silent Streets as Austinites Stay Home
Downtown resident Andrei Matei got some attention in the news last week for his candid photos of a bizarrely empty Austin, as the city effectively shuts down to prevent the spread of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak — and just in time for our new shelter-in-place orders, which took effect in Travis and Williamson Counties last night, Matei has released a new…
Downtown Austin’s Block 87 Tower Returns With a Freshened-Up Design
A towering future for the full block at 701 Trinity Street bound by Neches, Trinity, Seventh and Eighth Streets could finally take shape, after years of speculation and modifications to a challenging design in a challenging location. What’s known as Block 87 in the original downtown Austin plan, now home only to a parking lot, was originally…
Long Before Carmelo’s It Was the Depot Hotel, Now Take a Peek at What’s Being Planned
Houston-based Allen Harrison Company has made its first public move on downtown Austin’s historic Depot Hotel at 504 East Fifth Street, by revealing plans to demolish the non-historic structures on site. Until recently, the site was the location of Carmelo’s restaurant. Michele Lynch, a land use specialist with Metcalfe Wolff Stuart & Williams, will make their case…