East Austin Historic Resource Survey Underway

On Friday, Rosewood Neighborhood Park was the site of Austin’s annual Juneteenth celebration. The historic park has been the site for the city’s Juneteenth celebrations going back to 1930. A few blocks to the west is Austin’s first library, the George Washington Carver Library, established in East Austin in 1933. Historic homes of freedmen remain as landmarks and cultural centers throughout the district.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, freedmen were moving to Austin, largely for greater opportunity in the city. Then, in 1928, a new city plan established East Austin as a “negro district,” the only area of the city where Black people could reliably access city services. The plan was an effort by the city to eliminate the need to build and provide segregated facilities throughout the city, effectively displacing people of color to East Austin, according to research by the Pease Park Conservancy.

Roughly a century later, accelerating development and a growing population led to a new form of displacement. Gentrification priced, and continues to price, many property owners out of East Austin neighborhoods, which have long stood as the center of the city’s Black community. 

As the district rapidly changes, the city of Austin is working to recognize the longstanding cultural importance of the neighborhood. On June 12, the city launched the East Austin Historic Resource Survey. The survey combines on-site fieldwork, community input, and archival research to document and identify areas of East Austin that have historical significance.

City employees, along with the consulting group HHM & Associates, will be out photographing and documenting neighborhoods across the district over the next two years, according to the city’s Historic Preservation Office, which is heading the survey. Looking at architecture, construction, and location, the experts are compiling data and research on the area’s oldest and most impactful buildings and resources that are at risk of being forgotten. Bounded by I-35, Lady Bird Lake, Airport Boulevard, and Manor Road, the district’s properties built before 1983, which are eligible for historic preservation, will be the focus of the survey.

The project expands on data compiled during a 2016 survey, said Sofia Wagner, a planner at the Historic Preservation Office. “It is a best practice in preservation to update historic resource surveys every 10 years, especially for areas like East Austin that have been undergoing rapid change and continued development pressure,” Wagner wrote to the Chronicle. 

As city employees continue to gather on-the-ground information, a questionnaire is open to the public until next April, according to the city’s Historic Preservation Office, inviting property owners and community members to share stories about areas of East Austin. This input, Wagner told us, is crucial to the project, particularly because the Eastside and similar areas are under-documented in formal historical archives.

According to Wagner, the city plans to complete the project in 2028, when the Historic Preservation Office will compile the photographs, data, and survey responses into a report that can provide the city with a more complete record of East Austin’s history. Wagner is hopeful about resident preservation possibilities as a result of the work. “Its recommendations can provide valuable information to property owners who want to preserve their properties,” she wrote. The city’s report will empower property owners with the information to designate their homes as historic landmarks, preserving hundreds of years of Austin’s rapidly disappearing history.

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