Despite the explosive variety of multifamily housing development along East Riverside Drive in Southeast Austin, one thing is almost always the same -- the buildings are six floors tall at most, the ubiquitous wood-framed apartment configuration known in cities all over the country as a one-plus-five. (You'll notice the first image on the Wikipedia entry for this building style ...
hotels
A Bigger H-E-B Won’t Fix Hancock Center, but It’s Not a Bad Start
We usually have a good time ragging on the outdated urban planning principles of the later 20th century -- urban renewal, highways everywhere, other weirdness -- so it's a little embarrassing to admit that Hancock Center, the 34-acre strip mall you know and love(?) at East 41st and Red River Streets, was a more pleasantly-designed environment for human beings between its ...
Austin’s Swinging ’60s Survive Behind Stucco at the Downtowner Motor Inn
At first glance, the most interesting thing about the La Quinta Inn at the corner of East 11th and San Jacinto Streets is the fact it's still standing, renting likely the cheapest rooms in downtown Austin only a stone's throw from the Texas Capitol out of a building that doesn't look much at all like downtown. Unlike the similarly nondescript Extended Stay America ...
Atlanta Might See This Austin Tower Before Austin, Somehow
EXTREMELY IMPORTANT UPDATE: In a classic twist of dramatic irony, mere hours after publishing this article the Republic tower project showed its first city permit activity in roughly two years -- if we didn't know better, we'd think it had something to do with us pestering the folks at Lincoln for this story all week. This new permit doesn't contain much beyond a description of ...
Central Austin Development Roundup: New Year, Same Towers
It's technically a new year, but can you really tell? Just as we struggled for most of 2020 with a virus named after 2019, the specter of 2020 still looms large over 2021 -- and it's going to take a while before that feeling of being unstuck from time goes away. One place time hasn't stopped is downtown Austin, however, with significant progress apparent on many of the tower ...
A Pioneering Work of Black Modernism Seeks Historic Status in East Austin
John Saunders Chase, the first black licensed architect in Texas, is responsible for some of the finest examples of midcentury design still standing in East Austin. Chase, who died in 2012, was also one of the first two African-American students to enroll at the University of Texas in 1950 after the Sweatt v. Painter decision by the U.S. Supreme Court desegregated UT at the ...