Town Lake<\/a> \u2014 now Lady Bird Lake \u2014 shrouds part of the\u00a0Bouldin Creek neighborhood.\u00a0<\/p>\nWhen this image popped up a few weeks ago on Facebook, we had to solve the mystery. Social media followers and preservation experts chimed in.<\/p>\n
The crowd roars<\/p>\n
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In this aerial photo from the 1960s, you can see the mystery building just to the northeast of the Municipal Auditorium, later called Palmer Auditorium, and much later remodeled into the Long Center for the Performing Arts.<\/p>\n
Austin History Center<\/p>\n
The day this startling image was posted, social media commenters began making their case. Here\u2019s a selection:<\/p>\n
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Ken Bruce: \u201cI don’t know, but would guess, possibly, a former canoe rental facility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kevin Peroni: \u201cTown Lake Concession Building \u2014 also referred to simply as the Auditorium Shores concession stand or terrace \u2014 located on the south shore of then Town Lake.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sam Smith: \u201cI vaguely remember it as just a Parks building, a pavilion that was as used occasionally for city events, and could be rented for private events, but otherwise open for use by the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nicki Turman: \u201cHubby says it\u2019s the Town Lake concession building. His Boy Scout troop was often there for snacks as they spent time building cool things at the Scout-a-Rama in the auditorium. Anyone remember those?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Adam Brewer: \u201cWe used to have banquets there for Troop 441 in the \u201880s\u201d<\/p>\n
Gardner Selby: \u201cA boathouse perhaps?\u201d<\/p>\n
Heather Powell: \u201cIs this where they watched the boat races?\u201d<\/p>\n
Marianne Midlo Rochelle: “Aqua Fest HQ?”<\/p>\n
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Emily Tracy-Haas: \u201cI had the great fun of performing on a big barge for the first ever Aqua Fest. I remember singing \u2018Moon River\u2019 over and over and over again as I floated down the lake. Somehow the barge tugged loose from its moorings and I floated way down stream, but I just kept singing! But to the point: I remember that little place as a concession stand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chris Walters: \u201cBack end of the Nighthawk?\u201d<\/p>\n
Bill Padgett: \u201cThere was a similarly-sized, 1-story on the west side into the early \u201870s that housed the Chamber of Commerce, and then into the early \u201890s, Parks and Recreation Department’s athletics staff. It was demolished to make room for the current Palmer Events Center.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lane Rockford Orsak: \u201cThe sign on the left ends with a “S” \u2014 I googled \u201cbusinesses next to Palmer Auditorium on the lake in the early \u201860s,\u201d and this came up: \u201cNelson’s: A small local business that sat right on the riverbank directly south of the Congress Avenue Bridge.\u201d Could this be Nelson’s?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Ben Sargent: \u201cMaybe part of Christie\u2019s \u2014 a good seafood house!\u201d<\/p>\n
Rick Baden: \u201cLooks like Christie\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
JF Margos: \u201cI agree that it looks like Christie\u2019s Seafood old building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Beth Boye: \u201cWas it during the construction of Christie\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n
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Doug Jacobs: “I remember Christie’s Seafood and this building looks like it. The building materials. If you zoom in and look at the mid top left you can see part of a business sign, not the billboards, and it looks like it could read Christie’s.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experts speak<\/p>\n
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If you look closely at the section of Christie’s Seafood on the right, it closely resembles the mystery structure. The more flamboyant part to the left must have been an addition. All this was later replaced by the Hyatt Regency Hotel.<\/p>\n
Austin History Center<\/p>\n
It\u2019s quite possible that almost every\u00a0commenter is right: concession stand, boathouse, banquet hall and seafood restaurant. It could be older than the Municipal Auditorium, and maybe went through multiple lives.<\/p>\n
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My resistance to the pro-Christie\u2019s caucus relates to a more famous historical shot of the flamboyant Austin outlet of Houston\u2019s oldest restaurant that dates back to 1917. In addition, at least one version of Christie\u2019s sat where the Hyatt Regency now rises, and the foreshortened distances in this mystery photo do not exactly correlate to the space between the hotel and what is now the Long Center.<\/p>\n
To move beyond educated guesses, I turned to two local preservation experts: Kim McKnight, division manager for Austin\u2019s historic preservation office, and Sarah Marshall, historic preservation and tourism program manager for Austin Parks & Recreation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t recall seeing this photo,\u201d McKnight wrote. \u201cI do recall that the area around Auditorium Shores had G.I. housing through the early \u201850s.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
McKnight copied Marshall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\u201cElementary, my dear Watson!\u201d McKnight wrote. \u201cSarah can solve just about any history mystery.\u201d<\/p>\n
Using historical photos and newspaper articles \u2014 plus a sharply trained eye \u2014 Marshall does seem to have one of the last words. She attached three photos of Christie\u2019s in different phases.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the angle of (the) photo, this mystery building is where the Hyatt Regency now stands,\u201d Marshall wrote. \u201cThe attached 1979 article shows that Christie\u2019s Restaurant \u2014 formerly at 108 Barton Springs \u2014 was where the\u00a0Hyatt Regency is now. The photo in the article shows the Congress Ave Bridge from the Christie\u2019s Restaurant porch, so that tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another historical photo that Marshall, like others, had seen of Christie\u2019s showed a much bigger building.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut you can see that the roof line on the west end of the building matches the one in (this) photo. Christie\u2019s Restaurant opened in 1963, and Wray Weddell\u2019s 1966 article states they were planning an addition. I believe the building in (this) photo is Christie\u2019s Restaurant before it was remodeled.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other stories in this series<\/p>\n
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Please send tips and questions to mbarnes@statesman.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Curious minds wanted to identify this mystery building from the 1960s on Town Lake. Concession stand? Boathouse? Events…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-353342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}