Austin | Historic Images & Postcards

[LoneStarMike]

Originally Posted by Armybrat

Have you run across any pics that show Petmecky's Sporting Goods/Hardware store on Congress?

Karotkin's, Loyal Clothiers, Bill & Opal's Cafe, Oettings, Montgomery Ward, Petmecky's Sporting Goods, Stanford Furniture. East side of the 400 block of Congress Ave.

Source Portal to Texas History

[KevinFromTexas]

6th Street in the 1890s. The 3-story building in the middle is still there and is the Austin Visitor's Bureau.


Jim Nicar Remember in Austin, Tx. when... - https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=1&theater

[Homecreek]

Sorry. I don't think it is the Austin Visitor's Bureau. This building has a different front but more importantly the shadows are on the wrong side of the people walking down the street. It looks like 806 Congress. If you look at the current building it has two dates on top. Looks like the building was added on to in 1906. Also most parades were down Congress from the Capital to the river. And finally most parades are before noon and the shadows cast would mean this picture was taken in the morning.

[KevinFromTexas]

You're right, unless the building went through a hefty remodeling job. The upper windows on this side of the building also don't show up in the Google Street view, and there are no marks hinting there were any there before. The surrounding buildings look different also. Now I'm wondering if this is in Austin at all.

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2674...6xH6M2OKrw!2e0

[KevinFromTexas]

Nevermind, someone else mentioned that it must be this other building that's actually on Congress at 8th & Congress, but even that building is slightly different. Though, it has two dates on the facade, possibly suggesting it was built in 1897 and then expanded in 1906. Note the windows and parapet.

https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2698...FA!2e0!6m1!1e1

[Homecreek]

Here is 806 Congress

http://goo.gl/maps/OKnx9

[IluvATX]

It appears that the photo was taken between 1897 and 1906 because the street view is definitely the same building.

[LoneStarMike]

Originally Posted by KevinFromTexas

Nevermind, someone else mentioned that it must be this other building that's actually on Congress at 8th & Congress, but even that building is slightly different.

It's definitely the building at Congress & 8th. That building is known as the Bosche-Hogg Building. Philip Bosche established the first steam laundry west of the Mississippi here in Austin.

[jg6544]

The more interesting building to me, is the two-story frame building to the left of the taller one. It appears to me to date from before the Civil War and could have been one of the oldest buildings in Austin at the time.

[jg6544]

It looks to me like they added another wing mirroring the 1897 wing in or around 1906 and the double building is still standing on Congress Avenue.

[MichaelB]

Originally Posted by jg6544

It looks to me like they added another wing mirroring the 1897 wing in or around 1906 and the double building is still standing on Congress Avenue.

That's always my take on that buiding…. and part of what makes it really interesting.

[LoneStarMike]

Originally Posted by BevoLJ

Here is one from even before the courthouse or current capitol had been built. It is of a tightrope walker John Devier crossing Congress Ave in 1867.


http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/675...res/?width=930

Note the three-story Avenue Hotel on the east side on Congress Ave.

Here's an ad I found for it in the 1897-1898 City Directory.



http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/675...1/11/sizes/xl/

Looks like they had added a fourth floor by then.

The Avenue Hotel was still listed in the 1922 City Directory. In the 1922 directory, the hotel was at 721 Congress Avenue, the hotel bar was at 719 Congress Avenue and the hotel barber shop was at 717 Congress Avenue.

It was torn down sometime before 1935, because the State Theater occupies part of that space now and it was built in 1935.

[Homecreek]

The building on the left is still at the corner of 7th and Congress. I think it is cool when you can seethe same building back then now.

[KevinFromTexas]

Jim Nicar on Facebook

[jg6544]

(Texas legend) J. Frank Dobie absolutely loathed the Tower. The two comments I can recall are that it looked like a silo with a Greek outhouse on top and that they should lay it on its side and run galleries along it.

[KevinFromTexas]

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news...ause-of-safety

Grand outside, hollow within: UT keeps Tower nearly half-empty because of safety concerns

Published on March 28, 2014 at 1:10 am
Last update on March 29, 2014 at 1:52 pm
BY BOBBY BLANCHARD

More than half of the floors of the UT Tower are empty, classified formally by the University as either “vacant” or “future storage space.” Furniture and unused computer monitors are the only occupants in some of the abandoned offices. The few employees who still work in the upper floors of the Tower won’t be there much longer, because of safety concerns involving evacuation policies. Though the outside of the Tower is ornately decorated, and instantly recognizable, UT’s most iconic building is largely hollow.

Of the 657 available rooms in the Tower and Main Building, only 57 percent are currently in use. Of those rooms, just under half are not occupied by people and are instead used as break rooms and for storage. Seventeen of the Tower’s 32 floors are unoccupied.

Slesnick said his office is nearly finished moving people out of the Tower’s upper floors. The University considers the space less safe than lower floors because of the Life Safety Code, a nationwide set of fire safety rules, which requires buildings have multiple exits in the case of a fire. From the 13th floor up to the top of the Tower, an area where there are still 20 occupied offices, there is only one staircase

[Jdawgboy]

I get the safety concerns but its a waste of space to let those floors just gather dust. I like the idea of them converting the floors as a horticultural facility but judging by the article, sounds like theres too many preservation rules to set it up. They need to have special lighting installations, watering equipment and humidifiers depending on the plants needs which I think they should be able to do the needed alterations. it's that or having an empty tower.

[the Genral]

Are they going to close the observation deck tours due to the safety issues? I imagine using the floor space for storage adds combustibles to the equation. Before they do that, they could add a really long zip line for evac purposes.

[jg6544]

When I was an undergrad, the library stacks were on several floors of the Tower and the Classics department and library were on the top floors.

[LoneStarMike]

August 14, 1945

V-J Day Celebration

View from on top of a car of a crowd of people celebrating on Congress Avenue.

http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth125297/

Crowd gathered around two servicemen dancing in the street.

http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth125264/

Note the liquor store next to the Baptist Service Center. Also, the signage at the far right (Steaks Chicken) I believe was called the Tally-Ho Restaurant.

It's address was 621-23 Congress Avenue. It's a parking lot today (where the planned Aloft Hotel would be constructed.)

This proposal to the Historic Landmark Commission to tear down 619 Congress Ave. where Wholly Cow Burgers is now, mentions:

The building was severely damaged by a fire that destroyed the neighboring 3-story building (at 621-23 Congress Avenue), that was home to the Tally-Ho, a famous downtown restaurant, in 1974.