It’s said that some early Christian baptisms were performed in the nude, signifying the restoration of the subject’s soul to its state of innocence at birth. To be naked without shame is to live free from original sin, at least in the biblical sense — and in the Austin of the 1970s, a legendary decade of hippie and outlaw amalgamation now considered responsible for much of the ...
history
On 17th Street, Historic Austin Architecture Hides in Plain Sight
You don't need to spend the better part of a decade in architecture school to notice something's strange about the Rio House Apartments, a 45-unit multifamily building rising four floors at the northeast corner of West 17th and Rio Grande Streets. It's not often you'll see a structure with a four-story perforated metal screen surrounding its southern wall -- a screen through ...
Here’s What a Decade of Growth Looks Like on Rainey Street
The boom of downtown Austin condo and apartment development in the Rainey Street District had already started by 2010, but the neighborhood really started rising in the last decade -- meaning that in 2020, the district is a full-fledged part of the city's skyline, with multiple buildings on the way that will push its heights even further. Flickr user Floyd Wilde was nice ...
In 1973, Zilker’s Holiday Tree Went Dark
The lighting of the 155-foot tree at Zilker Park fashioned from one of the city's iconic moonlight towers is the most visible sign of the holiday season's arrival in Austin. The tree itself dates back to 1967, with the Zilker celebration now known as the Trail of Lights dating back even further to a "Yule Fest" event first held in 1965. But in 1973, the nationwide ...
When the Klan Took Republic Square
If you were a native-born white male Anglo-Saxon Protestant Austinite interested in joining the hooded ranks of the Ku Klux Klan, the summer of 1922 was a pretty friendly time to be alive — after all, you had company everywhere you looked. During the hate group's so-called second coming in the early 1920s, our burgeoning local chapter, Capital City Klan No. 81, held its ...
