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Michael Barnes is theAustin American-Statesman's socialcolumnist. He lives inSouth Austin with hispartner, Kip, two dogs andtwo cats. More on Out &About.

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Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2010 > February > 11 > Entry

A Walk through Original Austin Neighborhoodwith Chris Riley

By Michael Barnes | Thursday, February 11, 2010, 02:03 PM

Ancient Austin names —Robinsons, Bremonds,Nalles, Palms, Caswells— linger like spectresamong the broad streetsand cramped alleyways ofthis venerable downtownneighborhood.

Their extended families,some with servants, livedhere, roughly betweenWest Avenue, SanAntonio, West Seventhand West 15th streets inthe 19th century, back when Little Shoal Creek cut a ravine through the lowlandswhere Nueces Street — now a proposed bicycle avenue — streaks.

Few live here today. The proud homes of this Old Austin neighborhood, recentlyre-branded “Original Austin,” were colonized by austere, sometimes depersonalizedlaw firms and lobbyists’ headquarters during the postwar period. The descendantsof Austin’s merchants, lawyers, manufacturers and bankers moved out to thesuburbs, leaving behind the neatly platted, tree-lined properties around AustinCommunity College, once Austin High School, to morph into a checkerboard ofoffices and surface parking lots.

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In just the past few years, however, residentshave returned. Some are urged on by urbanactivists, such as Austin City Council MemberChris Riley, seeking to demonstrate theneighborhood’s viability as a 24-hour-a-dayhome.

Riley was my guide during the most recentOut & About neighborhood walking tour. (Forpreviously published columns on walksaround the Guadalupe, East Cesar Chavez,East Riverside, Zilker, Barton and Bouldinneighborhoods, go toaustin360.com/outandabout.)

Riley, who co-founded the Downtown AustinNeighborhood Association in 1997,composed a miraculous Web site for theOriginal Austin Neighborhood Association(www.originalaustin.org). There, one canmake a block-by-block virtual tour of the area, clicking through images of Victorianhouses, Queen Anne cottages and Gulf Coast colonials to read histories of manyproperties.

Riley, his bicyclist’s lean frame slightly stooped, met me at his home on San AntonioStreet, shared with girlfriend Denise Brady, lawyer and coordinator of earlychildhood programs at Texas Health and Human Services Commission. In 2002and 2003, Riley had rescued the sturdy, two-story Burke-Henricks House, built in1890, from a possible wrecking ball or commercialization. Yet that was only part ofthe challenge.

How to update all theplumbing, electricity andinsulation, also collectrainwater, tend gardensand improve kitchens,using green methods, inwhat had served for yearsas boarding-house-typeapartments, improvisedoffices or had remainedvacant? And how makethe project cost-effective?

“There’s almost no way todo it without chargingoutrageous rents,” sighs Riley, who admits he paid more for the renovation than hedid for the house. He and Brady now occupy stylistically attuned, connecteddownstairs apartments; while two upstairs units provide some rental income. But ifRiley can’t retrofit an old house for residency on a strict budget, it explains whymore residents haven’t returned to renovate the surrounding properties. Our tourstarted with the 1887 birds-eye-view map of Austin. In fact, versions of thisessential resource hung on the walls of every house I visited during our tour.

(Close-ups of this map, plus theoriginal 1939 Waller city plan, the1873 bird’s-eye-view, and threeSanborn insurance fire insurancemaps (1900,1935 and 1961) arebuilt into the neighborhood Website.)

Clearly, Original Austin — I’m notfond of the name — was somethingof an upscale neighborhood,although later upstaged by Judge’sHill just to the north. The biggerhouses perch on two low ridgesabove the Little Shoal Creek ravine.Where’s the creek, you ask?Completely below street level,bricked over, flowing from a WestCampus spring to an open outletonto Shoal Creek near West FourthStreet.

(Riley is among the spelunkers who have traced this clear, underground stream; the1873 map, found at www.birdseyeviews.org, shows the lost creek best.)

Some of the highland structures on San Antonio Street, to the east, are decidedlyeccentric, such as the Austin Woman’s Club castle, recently placed on a list ofAustin’s most endangered historic buildings. The matching geographic height —even more gentle — to the west is Rio Grande Street, actually the grandest avenueof the neighborhood, and not West, which is labeled an avenue (twinned in EdwinWaller’s symmetrical grid plan with East Avenue, which Interstate 35 plowed

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under).

Riley told me marvelous stories about dozens of houses. Here, Indians gatheredregularly around a spring late into the 19th Century. There, short-story-writer O.Henry inscribed his name in a window sill. On that hill, a banking family built homesfor their married children. On this corner, industrial leaders occupied a bifurcated,Italianate mansion reputedly haunted by ghosts.

Two mansions — CaswellHouse and Allan House —now serve as special-events venues. (At leasttheir social functions arepreserved.) A cluster ofgray-tinted homes alongRio Grande — one theoriginal home to WholeFoods — have beentransformed into theprogressive KhabeleSchool. Down the way, aspacious Tudor Revivalhouse was protected onland intended to completea office tower, but nobody has found a way to make a residential renovationfinancially reasonable.

A nest of tales is embedded in a house on West 11th Street, occupied by publisherTed Siff, his actress wife Janelle Buchanan and their daughters. The core of thehouse — plain, but dignified in scale and execution — was built in the 1850s for Lt.Governor Edward Clark. A working well remains out front. Additions made by thecurrent owners in the past decade were designed at angles and jogs in order topreserve century-old oaks.

Nearby rises Pease Elementary, the state’s oldest continually operating school,itself a tidy gem.

Another, home to thefamous “red parties,”opens onto a wonderlandof coffeeshop art, maps,novelties and historicalprints. In the Victorianfashion, the owner hascovered the walls, ceilingto floor, with this deliciouseye candy, also attachingart to the ceilings.

Although statewideassociations and smallerlaw firms are the main —and perfectly understandable — intrusions into this formerly residential zone sonear the Capitol and the courthouse, Austin Community College is the institutionalGoliath still buying up land and recently erecting a huge parking garage on thewestern edge of campus At least it has fixed up the former high school’s gracefulold gymnasium. And its students help populate the sidewalks on school days.

I could have spent six Sunday mornings with Riley, soaking up anecdotes about OldAustin/Original Austin and meeting its residents. I’ve often daydreamed about livinghere, but always assumed the cost threshold for residential rescue was too high.Riley showed me the underlying reasons, but also the rewards for persevering inthis cultivated corner of Austin.

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By SueFebruary 11, 2010 3:18 PM | Link to this

Please tell Kip he revolutionized my kitchen and Christmas with hid fabulousbiscotti. I tweaked the pistachio a bit and sent to family in Wisconsin. I don't daresend to others as I don't have any more time to spare! It is hands down the bestthing ever from a newspaper, for certain.Many thanks for sharing.

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