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What do you see in this 1960s aerial photo of the Texas Capitol Complex in Austin? What don’t you see?<\/p>\n
Austin History Center<\/p>\n
Take a few seconds to look closer at this aerial photo of the\u00a0Texas Capitol Complex<\/a> taken during the 1960s.<\/p>\n Name five things that you see.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Name five things that you don\u2019t see.<\/p>\n We asked readers to play along with this historical puzzle.\u00a0<\/p>\n Their responses could not have been more varied. Some turned angry when they wrote about the changes during the past 60 years. Others waxed nostalgic and wistful.<\/p>\n Several lent us a crucial clue to one mystery, noting that the Westgate Tower<\/a> was under construction southwest of the Capitol grounds, which would date this photographic flyby to late 1964 or early 1965.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n What readers saw first<\/p>\n These are the top 10 sites that readers correctly identified, here numbered on the image.<\/p>\n Readers correctly identified these 10 sites from a 1960s aerial photo of the Texas Capitol Complex in Austin.<\/p>\n Graphic by Alice Bazerghi\/American-Statesman<\/p>\n 1. Texas Capitol: The domed 1888 building<\/a> at the center of the frame is hard to miss. It must have been winter because many of the trees are leafless. When this picture was taken, the prominent place of this building in the urban landscape could not be matched. No Capitol Mall. Fewer state office buildings.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n 2. Memorial Stadium: The modified 1924 football palace<\/a> on the University of Texas campus certainly looked a lot smaller back then. In the 1920s, it took the name \u201cMemorial\u201d to honor World War I veterans. The extra moniker, \u201cDarrell K. Royal<\/a>,\u201d borrowed from the coach of the Longhorns from 1957 to 1976, came in 1996.<\/p>\n 3. Old Central Public Library: Several readers identified the 1933 building across the street from Wooldridge Square Park in the foreground. Later, from 1979 to 2025, it served as the Austin History Center<\/a>, which has since expanded next door into the John Henry\u00a0Faulk Building, unbuilt when this photo was taken. Parts of the 1933 building will reopen this fall as the temporary home of Mexic-Arte Museum<\/a>.<\/p>\n 4. Texas Governor\u2019s Mansion: Fewer readers noticed this white, pre-Civil War residence<\/a> that was completed in 1856. It burned in 2008 and reopened in 2012, but access to the public has been fairly restrictive ever since.<\/p>\n 5. Travis County Courthouse: Located squarely in the foreground, this deco-inspired building was completed in 1931, expanded in 1958 and 1962, then renamed after integration hero Heman Marion Sweatt <\/a>in 2005. It replaced a Victorian-era courthouse that was located at East 11th Street and Congress Avenue. That beauty was sadly allowed to disintegrate. The 1931 version is in serious need of sensitive renovation or restoration, as well as a new role in the community.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n 6. Old Texas General Land Office: Completed in 1857, this Romanesque Revival\u00a0structure has been\u00a0better known since 1992 as the Capitol Visitors Center<\/a>. It once housed a museum about the Confederacy and recently its exterior received an award-winning redo. (Time to explore again.) It is somewhat overshadowed in this photo by the more modern office building behind it.<\/p>\n 7. Cambridge Tower and The Penthouse: Readers identified these two pioneering residential towers. The first, which appears to be under construction in this image, was considered a high modernist gem located next to campus; the other is somewhat forgotten except as part of the UT Tower mass shooting in 1966<\/a>. The shooter murdered his mother there \u2014 and his wife at the couple\u2019s Bouldin house \u2014 before he climbed the Tower.<\/p>\n 8. Interstate 35: The 1960s was the decade when the Interregional Highway<\/a> was completed through Central Austin as part of the interstate system. It looks slender and somewhat benign in this photograph, but it encouraged heavy traffic and suburban sprawl while it disrupted communities and intensified racial segregation.<\/p>\n 9. East Austin: From a distance, it looks leafy and bucolic, and that\u2019s how some residents remember their youth there, despite the racial animus of the 1960s. It was laid out along streets that converge with the original downtown grid at angles, because the later neighborhoods responded to the different topography.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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