Austin City

Travis County, Texas

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Austin City Hall is located at 301 West 2nd Street, Austin TX 78701.
Phone: 512‑974‑2200.


William Braxton Barr House

Austin [1] has served as Texas' seat of government since shortly after the city's founding in 1838. The city was established as the result of an internal struggle among the leaders of the newly formed Republic of Texas, which gained independence from Mexico in1836. Many believed Houston or some other established town should be selected as the capital of Texas. Intense competition and rivalry developed for that designation and the attendant financial and political opportunities it would provide. As a compromise, founding fathers decided that the creation of an entirely new community was the most appropriate solution. As president of the Republic, Mirabeau B. Lamar selected Waterloo, a small dispersed settlement on the Colorado River, as the new capital of Texas. Edwin Waller surveyed the townsite, including a grandly sited capitol square atop a hill that terminated a broad thoroughfare (Congress Avenue) extending from the river. Named in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the town became reality as the first lots were sold on August 1, 1839.

Neighborhoods

Beginnings[2]

The City of Austin was established in 1830 as the new capital of the Republic of Texas, and was laid out by Edwin Waller under the direction of President Mirabeau B. Lamar. Waller's plan, based on the eighteenth-century plan for Philadelphia, consisted of a grid with a central square at which major crossing axes terminated; smaller, secondary squares were located within the plan. The grid was part of a larger government tract which encompassed what would later become East Austin. However, during the first decades of the new city's life, the eastern parts of the government tract remained undeveloped save for the occasional use of the City Cemetery, State Cemetery, and the construction of the French Legation, a lone outpost on Robertson Hill in 1841.

Building was slow in Austin until about 1850, when the city was assured of its position as the state capital. After that point, many new and substantial buildings were constructed by a small but active population. Commercial, religious, and governmental structures proliferated, and along with them the demand for housing. As a result, residential construction began to spread throughout the city's original grid and to push on the boundaries of those parts of the government tract which were undeveloped.

The city experienced a brief building slowdown during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, but the arrival of the railroads in 1871 and 1876 brought tremendous growth in population and commerce. Predictably, parts of East Austin which were located in areas contiguous to the railroad on East 4th and 5th streets experienced immediate and dramatic growth, and the remainder of the original government tract was surveyed as large parcels with few roads.

  1. Martha Doty Freeman/David Moore (with assistance from Bruce D. Jensen, RloGrpup/Hardy-Heck-Moore, Hyde Park: An Early Suburban Development in Austin, Texas (1891-1941), nomination document, 1988/1990, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C., accessed October, 2023.

  2. Freeman, Martha Doty and Breisch, Kenneth, Historic Resources of East Austin [East Austin Multiple Resource Area], 1984, nomination document, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.

Nearby Towns: Rollingwood City •



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