Austin Audio Walking Tour

Highlights

• University of Texas at Austin

  Around you spreads the University of Texas at Austin, one of the largest and most influential public universities in the country. UT was established by the Texas Constitution of 1876 and opened its doors in 1883 with eight faculty members and 221 students — a modest beginning for what would become a research colossus.

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  Austin Bergstrom International Airport

  Even Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, close by here, tells you something essential about Austin. The facility occupies the former Bergstrom Air Force Base, established in 1942 to train pilots and support the massive mobilization of World War II.

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  Texas State Capitol

  Texas State Capitol rises in front of you, and the first thing that hits you is how big it is. At 308 feet tall, this building is 14 feet taller than the United States Capitol in Washington — a fact no Texan will let you forget.

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  Texas Governor's Mansion

  Six Ionic columns rise ahead of you, marking one of the oldest continuously occupied executive residences west of the Mississippi River. Built in 1856 in the Greek Revival style — six massive Ionic columns flanking a formal façade — the mansion has housed every Texas governor since Elisha Pease first moved in.

• Driskill Hotel

  Rusticated limestone and arched windows rise in front of you, marking one of the most storied buildings in Texas: the Driskill Hotel. Jesse Lincoln Driskill was a cattle baron who made a fortune driving longhorns up the Chisholm Trail, and in 1886 he invested that fortune in a monument to his own success.

All 40 stops

• 6th Street (Dirty Sixth) (Downtown)

  Ahead of you stretches America's rowdiest historic block, the one locals call Dirty Sixth, equal parts affection and warning.

• Rainey Street District (Downtown)

  Notice the craftsman bungalows lining Rainey Street, now converted into some of Austin's most popular bars and restaurants — but the story here is more…

• Congress Avenue Bridge (Downtown)

  Wait here at dusk anytime between March and October, and the concrete deck beneath your feet begins to stir with the largest urban bat colony…

• Texas State Capitol (Capitol Complex)

  Texas State Capitol rises in front of you, and the first thing that hits you is how big it is.

• Texas Governor's Mansion (Capitol Complex)

  Six Ionic columns rise ahead of you, marking one of the oldest continuously occupied executive residences west of the Mississippi River.

• Driskill Hotel (Downtown)

  Rusticated limestone and arched windows rise in front of you, marking one of the most storied buildings in Texas: the Driskill Hotel.

• Austin City Hall (Downtown)

  Picture a mesa rather than a monument: New Mexico architect Antoine Predock designed this in 2004, and nothing downtown looks like it.

• Laguna Gloria / Austin Museum of Art (West Austin)

  Picture the scene in 1916: a Mediterranean Revival villa rising on a finger of land where Barton Creek meets the Colorado River, on Lake Austin's…

• Blanton Museum of Art (UT Campus)

  Here at the edge of the University of Texas at Austin campus sits one of the largest university art museums in the country, its collection…

• University of Texas at Austin (UT Campus)

  Around you spreads the University of Texas at Austin, one of the largest and most influential public universities in the country.

• UT Tower / 1966 Shooting (UT Campus)

  Look up at 307 feet of limestone, lit burnt orange after every Longhorn win since this tower crowned the University of Texas campus in 1937.

• Seton Medical Center (Central Austin)

  Ahead of you rises Seton Medical Center, Austin's oldest hospital and a cornerstone of public health in Central Texas for more than a century.

• East Caesar Chavez Street (East Austin)

  Look at the street sign here: East Caesar Chavez, the main commercial artery of East Austin's historic Mexican American community, and a name that tells…

• East Austin History (East Austin)

  To understand East Austin, you need to know a single document: 'A City Plan for Austin, Texas,' published in 1928 by the planning firm Koch…

• Concordia University Texas (East Austin)

  Here in East Austin once spread the campus of Concordia University Texas, a Lutheran college opened in 1926 to serve this community.

• Huston-Tillotson University (East Austin)

  This campus has served as one of the oldest Historically Black Colleges and Universities in Texas, sustaining Black intellectual and professional life in Austin through…

• Tillotson / Samuel Huston College History (East Austin)

  Picture two Black colleges rising here decades apart, then merging in 1952 into one shared future.

• Rosewood Neighborhood (East Austin)

  Rosewood, the neighborhood you have entered, is one of the historic hearts of Black Austin, a community that built its own world when the rest…

• Barrio Guadalupe / Chicano Austin (East Austin)

  Since 1907, Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church has anchored the streets you walk here, once Barrio Guadalupe, the historic Mexican American neighborhood.

• Red River Cultural District (Downtown)

  Two blocks east of 6th Street's tourist bars, you enter a corridor built on rougher, more independent sounds.

• South Austin (South Austin)

  Around you spreads the neighborhood that gave a city its unofficial motto, coined in 2000 when local librarian Red Wassenich pleaded for independent businesses over…

• South Congress Avenue (SoCo) (South Austin)

  Picture pawn shops, cheap motels, and adult video stores lining this strip — that was SoCo for most of the twentieth century.

• Barton Springs Pool (Zilker Park)

  Feel the water first: nearly 1,000 feet of spring-fed pool holding a constant 68 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough in winter to steal your breath, cool…

• Zilker Park (South Austin)

  Open lawn rolls out ahead, 351 acres of creekside paths, swimming holes, and event grounds that work as Austin's communal living room.

• Long Center for the Performing Arts (Downtown)

  Overhead curves a dramatic concrete dome that looks freshly built but is not — it dates to 1959.

• Bouldin Creek Neighborhood (South Austin)

  Bouldin Creek, the neighborhood you are walking through, is one of South Austin's most beloved and contested communities, a grid of craftsman bungalows and cottage-style…

• Travis County Courthouse (Downtown)

  This building handles courts, property records, and elections for one of the most politically consequential counties in Texas.

• Pecan Street (Historic 6th Street) (Downtown)

  This corridor once carried a different name entirely — Pecan Street, so christened when Mirabeau Lamar laid out the Republic of Texas capital in 1839.

• Congress Avenue Historic Corridor (Downtown)

  Ahead of you, a straight line of pavement runs from the Colorado River to the Capitol dome on its hill, the exact axis Mirabeau Lamar…

• Mexic-Arte Museum (Downtown)

  Mexic-Arte Museum sits close to you here, Austin's official museum of Mexican and Mexican American fine art and folk art, and one of the most…

• Hyde Park (Central Austin)

  Curving streets and deep front porches surround you here, laid out in 1891 as Austin's first planned suburb north of the university.

• North Loop Vintage District (North Austin)

  North Loop, the strip you are walking, is Austin's scrappiest and most authentically weird retail corridor, the Keep Austin Weird ethos on a working-class budget…

• Mueller Neighborhood (East Austin)

  Look at streets and parks laid over the old runways of Robert Mueller Municipal Airport — one of the more remarkable planning stories in recent…

• Austin Bergstrom International Airport (Southeast Austin)

  Even Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, close by here, tells you something essential about Austin.

• Lady Bird Lake (Downtown)

  Lady Bird Lake lies close to you here, the urban reservoir that anchors downtown Austin's identity as a city that knows how to live next…

• Division Street / The Great Divide (East Austin)

  Interstate 35 roars past you here on the line of old East Avenue, which the 1928 Austin city plan designated as the boundary between white…

• 6th Street Music History (Downtown)

  Ask a musician here where Austin's legend started, and they'll point not to a venue but to a television screen.

• Dirty Martin's Place (UT Campus)

  The smell of grease and toasted buns greets you on Guadalupe Street, right where Dirty Martin's Place has served Austin, Texas, since 1926.

• Waterloo Records (Central Austin)

  Waterloo Records sits near you here, Austin's beloved independent record store and one of the few brick-and-mortar music retailers in America that has not only…

• Austin History Center (Downtown)

  Limestone walls and tall arched windows face you, completed in 1933 as Austin's Carnegie Library.

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