French Place is a bit of an enigma. It’s not quite a neighborhood, but also not just one street — the best way to describe it is a small enclave within the larger Cherrywood neighborhood of East Austin, with porous boundaries depending on who you ask. Best we can tell, French Place makes up the region of…
neighborhoods
Austin’s Travis Heights Neighborhood Headed For National Historic Status
The Travis Heights neighborhood of South Austin, one of the city’s more notable concentrations of historic domestic architecture, could attain its long-sought admission to the National Register of Historic Places by next year. The Texas Historical Commission’s State Board of Review unanimously approved the 353-acre district’s nomination to the federal register at a meeting last…
Neighborhood-Scale Grocery Stores Keep Austin Stocked in a Pandemic
Austinites looking to avoid waiting in line at the major grocery stores limiting their occupancy during the coronavirus pandemic are likely discovering just how useful it is to have a small grocery store or bodega with staple items available within walking distance of their homes. Local outlets like Fresh Plus, Wheatsville Co-Op, and Royal Blue…
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…
In 1980, Austin’s Zoning Board Made a 9-Year-Old Tear Down His Clubhouse
Forts and clubhouses, timeless portals to the secret world of kids, stand apart from adult society and its grim concerns of property and propriety — and this usually works out just about fine, at least until those kids get old enough to hide beer inside them. But no age, innocent or otherwise, can save you from suburban residential zoning….
In Far East Austin, Govalle’s Going Up
The Midtown RV Park, located at 720 Airport Boulevard on the far east end of Austin’s equally far-east Govalle neighborhood, is no more. In its place will rise Nexus East, a 352-unit apartment project by local development firm Ardent Residential, split between two four-story buildings atop the former RV park’s sizable 8.375-acre tract. The Nexus…