AustinRemembers… “Collective Memory of

Austin & Travis County” WINTER, 2014 Austin HistoryCenter Association

On May 30, 2013, the Austin Public Library—consisting of 20 branches, the Faulk Central Library, the Austin History Center, and Recycled Reads used book store—launched construction of a new central library at 710 W. Cesar Chavez St., facing Austin’s Ladybird Lake and nestled alongside Shoal Creek. The

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Editor’s Note: Golf Legends Replay the Rounds at Stark By Beth Fowler

The first library temporary structure opened in 1926. Image PICA 01437, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library. Grace Delano Clark volunteered as the first librarian. Image PICB 01791, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

New Central Library is set to open in 2016.

At that time, the Austin History Cen-ter will expand into the vacated space at the Faulk Library. As the planning, construction, and activity rushes for-ward, take a step backwards to explore how the Austin Public

Angelina Eberly Luncheon

Journalists to Explore When “Austin, Texas”

Became “Austin”By Geoff Wool

When someone says “Dallas,” most people know the city you’re referring to and its geographic location in the world. News coverage of the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, the success of the city’s NFL franchise and exposure from a number one-rated TV show bearing the city’s name combined to help Dallas be-come a cultural reference and recogniz-able spot on the global map. When some-one says, “Fort Worth,” unless you’re from Texas, you’ll likely need more context to get a correct sense of location.

In 1975, Austin still needed its “Texas” surname to complete the frame of refer-ence for people living outside the state. Sure, it was the state capital and home to the University of Texas, and in the 1960s it was the outpost for White House journal-ists traveling with President Johnson, but besides that, there wasn’t much national or international news generated here. And when there was news, it always carried the dateline: “Austin, Texas.”

But sometime between then and now, “Austin, Texas” became simply, “Austin.”

On Friday, January 31, 2014, veteran television news anchor Ron Oliveira and five journalists who covered Austin news in the 1980s and 1990s will gather at the historic Driskill Hotel to answer the ques-tion, When did “Austin, Texas” become simply “Austin?” The panel is the center-piece for the 2014 Angelina Eberly Lun-cheon, benefiting the Austin History Cen-ter Association. Drawing on their unique perspective as eyewitnesses to history, the panel of reporters

In the early 1970s, Ben Crenshaw superimposed college classes with professional golf the way his fin-gers joined in the reverse overlap grip. While studying at the University of Texas, he continued to ascend in the world of competitive golf, successfully competing on the amateur circuit, including a top-20 finish at The Masters, then, turning pro. In 1973, he saw his photo-graph on the cover of Sports Illustrated with the head-line “Make Way for the Kid.”

Now forty years later, the classic black and white saddle golf shoe Crenshaw wore Continued on Page 7

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CENTRAL LIBRARY IN MOTION By Ann Dolce

Continued on Page 4

L to R, Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw. Courtesy of the Tom Kite Col-lection; H.J. Lutcher Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports.

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The mission of the Austin History Center Association is to help the community value our past and build a better future - by supporting the Austin History Center to achieve excellence in its efforts to serve as the collective memory of Austin and Travis County.

Austin History Center

Association, Inc.810 Guadalupe

Austin, Texas 78701512.974.7499

www.austinhistory.net

Mailing addressP. O. Box 2287

Austin, Texas 78768

Board of DirectorsExecutive Committee

Evan Taniguchi, President

Robert Sullivan, First Vice President

Ken Tiemann, Second Vice President

Terrell Blodgett, Treasurer

Jena Stubbs, Secretary

Maria Ines Garcia, Member-at-Large

Ann Dolce, Immed. Past President

Directors at Large

Charles Betts / Cindy Brandimarte / Liz Bremond / Linda Bush /Lynn Cooksey / Beth Fowler / Brooks Goldsmith / Becky Heiser / Mary Ann Heller / Kathleen Davis Niendorff / Charles Peveto / Patsy Stephenson / Toni Thomasson /Candace Volz / Anne Wheat / Geoff Wool

Mike Miller, AHC Archivist

Austin History Center Association Staff

Jeff Cohen, Executive DirectorAllison Supancic, Office Manager

Becca Thompson, Accountant

Beth Fowler, Editor/Creative DirectorRebecca Jarosh, LayoutGeoff Wool, Public RelationsAnne Wheat, Photo Coordinator

AustinRemembers…

will offer a behind-the-scenes look at developments that occurred in the last part of the 20th century, a time when Austin ascended in relevancy not only in the United States, but across the globe.

“Each of these journalists has years of experience and interesting stories to tell about how Austin has changed and how their profession has changed,” Oliveira said. “Plus, these people tell stories for a living so I’m sure there will be more than a few laughs.”

Joining Oliveira on the panel will be Judy Maggio, who for the last 34 years has de-livered news to Austin television viewers through her work at KVUE-TV and KEYE-TV.

Perennially voted “Best News Anchor in Austin” by readers of the Austin Chronicle, Maggio also has been honored as Austin Commu-nicator of the Year, Austin Toastmaster of the Year, and has received numerous awards for excellence in journalism.

Ken Herman, currently a columnist for the Austin American-Statesman, will add his brand of quick-witted commentary to the panel. Herman joined the Austin staff of the Associated Press in 1979 and covered the pageantry, personalities and politics of the state capital until 2004, when he left Austin for Washington, D.C. to cover the George W. Bush White House for the Associated Press.

Austin radio news will be represented on the panel by Monte Williams, who reported from 1979 to 1983 for what was then KNOW-AM. During his time as a reporter, Williams and his KNOW news team won awards from United Press International, the Associ-ated Press and the Texas and National Association of Broadcasters. More recently, this

longtime Austin writer was named by the Austin American-Statesman as one of the 25 funniest people in Austin.

Rounding out the panel will be long-time news anchor/reporter/producer Cathy Con-ley Swofford, who also reported for KNOW-AM as well as KEY 103 FM, KXAN-TV, KVUE-TV, and KLRU-TV. Conley Swofford and her husband, former KTBC-TV anchor/reporter David Swofford, co-own Conley Swofford Media, an Austin-based public rela-tions firm.

Proceeds from the Angelina Eberly Luncheon go to the Austin History Center As-sociation, supporter of the Austin History Center archives for Austin and Travis County.

Ron Oliveira

Judy Maggio Ken Herman Monte Williams Cathy Conley Swofford

EBERLY from Page 1

From Palo Duro Canyon in the Panhandle to Lake Corpus Christi, from Balmorhea in far West Texas to Caddo Lake near the Louisiana border, the state parks of Texas are home to not only breathtaking natural beauty, but also to historic buildings and other structures produced by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) during the 1930s. Texas State Parks and the CCC: The Legacy of the Civilian Conservation Corps by Cindy Brandimarte with Angela Reed mines archives from around the state to compile a rich visual record of how this New Deal program left an indelible stamp on many of the parks we still enjoy today.

Some fifty thousand men were enrolled in the CCC in Texas, and between 1933 and 1942, they constructed trails, cabins, concession buildings, bathhouses, dance pavilions, a hotel, and a motor court. Before they arrived, the state’s parklands consisted of fourteen parks on about 800 acres. By the end of World

“New Deal” Aided Bastrop Park

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From the Archivist: New Discoveries from “How to Prepare a Possum” Exhibit

By Michael C. Miller, CA - Archivist

By the time you are reading this, our latest exhibit “How to Prepare a Possum: 19th Century Cuisine in Austin” will be closed. I certainly hope you had a chance to come see it. If you didn’t, we have a couple of ideas in the works that will recreate the exhibit, to a degree, in print form. Stay tuned for more details. While thinking about what to write here, I was thinking about this exhibit and a couple of fun discoveries that came out of it.

The first discovery is related to the picture shown here of Hermann Becker’s restaurant. A little backstory: Becker came to Austin in the 1880s and worked a few jobs as he tried to estab-lish himself here, including running his restaurant. He went on to establish a successful lumberyard. He donated the land that is now home to Becker Elementary School as well as the house he used to rent to William Sydney Porter, aka O. Henry, that is now the O. Henry Museum. This picture was used in the exhibit, and the “discovery” came when descendants of Becker, who were spending a few minutes here while waiting for the Faulk library to open, noticed the picture and exclaimed, “I know that man!” Members of the family ended up spending hours looking through materials we have on the Becker family, and this chance discovery of their family picture led them to reconnect with their past. This encounter proved to be a not so subtle reminder of the

Image PICH 03455, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library. Hermann P. Becker, a German immigrant to Austin, opened this restaurant on East 6th in the 1880s, the first of many business ventures. He left the restaurant business and started a highly successful lumberyard. He is pictured here standing at the far left.

importance of archives and the work we do here at the AHC to preserve our history.

The second discovery was internal. One of the artifacts we displayed was a ledger book from the Harrell General Store, one of the first grocery stores in Austin (in operation in the 1840s). When I pulled the ledger and started looking through it, I noticed immediately that sometime in the 1880s, someone started using this ledger as a scrapbook, a common 19th cen-tury practice when paper was scarce. As a scrapbook it con-tained the usual items: news clippings, poems, pictures from magazines, and some crude but interesting pencil sketches of animals. What was most interesting for the exhibit was the dis-covery of dozens of handwritten recipes of cakes, soups, meat dishes, salads and just about any other food you could imagine (but alas, no possum recipe). We don’t know who wrote the recipes or created the scrapbook – there is no name associ-ated with it – but it provided hours of enjoyment of reading the recipes and imaging someone creating these dishes for their family or for a house party.

There are literally millions more discoveries waiting to hap-pen at the AHC. I hope you can pay us a visit sometime soon and make one (or more) for yourself.

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Library came to be.The north half of block 101 where the Austin History Center

sits today was originally designated for church uses, and three churches and a school once stood on this lot. After the reloca-tion of these churches in 1913, Mayor A. P. Wooldridge suc-cessfully petitioned the state legislature to re-designate the lot for public library use. On November, 13, 1925, Grace Delano Clark, a member of the Austin Chapter of the American As-sociation of University Women, persuaded the organization to take on the project of establishing a library for Austin and the Austin Public Library Association was born. The chapter members went house to house canvasing for book donations and money for a building. The first library, a temporary struc-ture, opened in 1926 at 409 W. 9th Street in an 1800 square foot wooden frame building and housed 1,700 volumes. The cost - $4,190. Mrs. Clark volunteered as the first librarian.

In 1928 the Austin voters approved $150,000 in bonds for a permanent 36,000 square foot building at the site, and the temporary building was moved to Angelina Street to become Austin’s first public library branch, the Carver Branch.

Hugo Franz Kuehne, an Austin architect and a founder of the school of architecture at the Univer-sity of Texas, designed the first permanent home of the Austin Public Library and construction be-gan in 1932. Henry E. Wattinger was named the general contractor with a bid of $106,638; John L. Martin was the plumbing and heating contractor ($58,747); and Fox-Schmidt com-pleted the electrical work ($4,048).

The building took advantage of local mate-rials and craftsmen. Cordova cream limestone was used to achieve the Italian Renaissance Re-vival style of the building. Fortunat Weigl, a German

LIBRARY from Page 1

ironsmith who immigrated to Texas in 1913, created ornamental wrought iron work to enhance the balconies, doors and windows. Peter Mansbendel, a Swiss master woodcarver who came to Texas in 1911, carved much of the interior woodwork. Harold Everett “Bubi” Jessen (1908-1979), a local architect, and Peter Allidi (1885-1948), also a Swiss immigrant who was a local art-ist and interior decorator, painted the frescoes on the ceiling of the arched loggia on the north side of the building. Allidi had previously completed the decoration in the architecture library of Goldsmith Hall on the University of Texas Campus and Jes-sen was a student assistant on the project. (It is interesting to note that Peter Allidi’s wife, Esther Mirel Allidi, was the creator of Mrs. Allidi’s La Martinique salad dressing). Countless Austi-

Detail from Image PICA 01114, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library. This picture shows the AHC block when it was still zoned for churches. It was home to the 1) First Baptist Church (Negro), 2) African Methodist-Episcopal Church, and the 3)Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Church. In bottom right foreground, the open greenspace is Wooldridge Square Park.

1 2 3

Image PICA 28184, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library. Early Austin Public Library (which became the present Austin History Center) prior to Faulk addition. Hugo Franz Kuehne, an Austin ar-chitect and a founder of the school of architecture at

the University of Texas, designed the first permanent home of the Austin Public Library and construction

began in 1932. The Faulk addition is shown at right on facing page.

TV where he mixed his down-to-earth humor with a strong support for intel-lectual freedom.

When the Faulk Central Library moved into its facility in 1979, the newly formed Austin History Center Guild (today, AHCA) began consoli-dating community support so that the old central building could be reno-vated to house the expanding Austin-Travis County Collection. Municipal

CIP bonds and grants from the Economic Development Administration, together with contributions from the Heri-tage Society of Austin, the Junior League of Austin, and local individuals, financed the renovation of the building. The renovation project fundraising was spearheaded by Austinite Sue Brandt McBee. The refurbished building was opened in 1983 as the Austin History Center.

By 1998 Austin had once again outgrown the central library building and the Austin History Center was bursting at the seams with little space for new archival materials. Even though the Faulk Central Library was designed to allow for the addition of 4 floors, the Capitol view corridor legislation passed in 1983 prohibited the construction of the additional floors. It was time once again to bring on the fundraisers, the architects and the contractors!

In November of 2006 voters approved a bond to construct a new central library; in 2008 the Austin City Council selected Joint Venture of Lake Flato Architect and Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott to design the building; in 2010 the Aus-tin City Council approved a building program and a funding plan of $120 million; and in the Spring of 2013 ground was broken. The library and nearby improvements are expected by be completed in 2016.

The new flagship facility will sit promi-

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nites formed affectionate, personal bonds with this landmark through their time spent reading, imagining and exploring its gra-cious spaces. Mayor Lee Leffingwell stated in 2013 that next to the state capitol, this Texas Historic Landmark “is the best, the most significant building in the city of Austin.”

As significant as the build-ing is, by the 1970s the Central Library had outgrown its space and plans were once again underway for a new central li-brary. One of the 13 sites rec-ommended by a selection com-mittee in 1975 was the south half of block 101, next door to the existing library. This property met all the criteria from the Library’s standpoint and was land that the city owned. It was an easy decision. The new building at 800 Guadalupe, designed by the Austin architecture firm of Jessen Associ-ates, Inc., was completed in 1979 and contains 110,000 square feet of space on four stories (plus a basement). It was built at a cost of $6 million and its modern design was in stark contrast to the neighboring Italian Renaissance. Even though the designs were very different there was a continuity in the design team. One of the principals in Jessen Associates, Inc. was Harold E. “Bubi” Jessen, who had worked on the frescoes in the original library building.

In 1995 the City Council voted to rename the Central Library after John Henry Faulk, well-known Austin writer and humorist who had died in 1990. Faulk was born in Austin and grew up in the nineteenth century house in South Austin known as Green Pastures. He was a pupil of noted folklorist and storyteller J. Frank Dobie and from 1947-1956 hosted a daily radio program in New York City. He led the actors’ union fight against the practice of blacklisting entertainers with alleged connections to the Commu-nist Party. He appeared on the lecture circuit, in movies and on Continued on Page 7

Cou

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John Henry Faulk Image CN05869, courtesy The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin. Sue Brandt McBee Image PICA 30892, Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

Clockwise from the top, Harold E. Jessen (1928 Cactus); Peter Mansben-del, Image PICB 05688; Weigl created Austin History Center ironwork, Image PICA 15253; and Fortunat Weigl, Image PICA 27358 (detail), Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

P. O. Box 2287 • Austin, TX 78768 • 512-974-7499 • director@ahca.net • www.austinhistory.netAlso visit us in the O. Henry Room of the Austin History Center at 810 Guadalupe (at 9th).

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LIBRARY from Page 5

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GOLF from Page 1

nently along Shoal Creek overlooking Lady Bird Lake. As the western portal to downtown and the terminus to Second Street, the library takes advantage of Austin’s investment in revitalizing west downtown and Shoal Creek. The 198,000 square foot building will feature a variety of valuable program-ming elements: generous space to house collections; a technology rich environment with computers and other electronic equipment; community meet-ing spaces to accommodate groups ranging from 4 to 350; a dedicated children’s area and teen space; a satellite operation of Recycled Reads, the Library’s bookstore, plus a café. Outside a landscaped plaza and street front will provide space for bicycle parking and repair facility adjacent to trails and parks.

In the center of the library, natural light will flood an airy, six-story atrium. An angled roof and angled glass will diffuse the harsh Texas sun where stairs and “bridges” of wood and glass will connect the levels. “We wanted the atrium to be the heart of the library,” says Lake Flato’s David Lake, lead designer on the

project.As the Faulk Central Library

looks to the new “library of the future” at 710 W. Cesar Chavez Street, the Austin History Center is planning its future expansion as well. The History Center will move its more than one million items documenting Austin’s history from before its 1839 founding to the present, including 12,500 biogra-phies on residents who influenced

the community and more than 1,000,000 historic photographs, to the neighboring Faulk Central Library. Early planning shows the expanded Austin History Center encompassing the two buildings, and includes a central plaza joining them to create a sense of one place. The move will allow for expanded ex-hibit space allowing for more exhibits and more interaction; expanded reading rooms to support students, scholars, and citizens as they learn more about Austin’s history; state of the art archival storage areas to better protect Austin’s history for future generations; and visible archives with chances for visi-tors to get a peek at what happens behind the scenes.

Grace Delano Clark would be proud.

at the 2013 Masters – his 42nd – seems to be on the other foot. Many up-and-coming golfers and fans alike now study the Ben Crenshaw Golf Collection housed in the University’s H.J. Lutch-er Stark Center for Physical and Cultural Sports, vast exclusive collection of photographs, books, multi-media and commentary, with signatures and notes by Crenshaw and others.

To commemorate the major collection, the Stark hosted Crenshaw, fellow Austin golf pro Tom Kite and radio sports mod-erator Ed Clements as panelists for a December 10 gathering of friends, supporters and Austin History Center Association guests. The panelists swapped stories about a mutual achieve-ment - 19 PGA Tour wins – including Crenshaw’s two Masters, and the Ryder Cup, plus Kite’s U.S. Open victory.

For the event, a temporary exhibit of local golf history was produced collaboratively by the Austin History Center and the Stark Center from their collections.

War II, CCC workers had helped cre-ate a system of forty-eight parks on al-most 60,000 acres throughout Texas, from the Davis Mountains and Goliad to Goose Island and Possum King-dom.

Accompanied by many never-pub-lished images that reveal all aspects of the CCC in Texas, from architec-tural plans to camp life, Texas State Parks and the CCC covers the forma-tion and development of the CCC and its design philosophy; the building of the parks and the daily experiences of the workers; the completion and management of the parks in the first decades after the war; and the ongoing

To sum up the sport on his website (www.bencrenshaw.com), Crenshaw says, “I’ve been playing golf almost all my life. From the time I was six years old when my father took me out to the Austin Country Club, through all the wins... and some significant losses, the one constant has been the enjoyment I’ve gotten from the game and people around the world I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”

On a personal note, there are several classmates serving together on the Austin History Center Association board of di-rectors – Liz Bremond, Becky Bradfield Hizer, Evan Taniguchi, and I – who have had the pleasure of growing up with Cren-shaw, his manager Scotty Sayers and Scotty’s wife Julie. We can each vouch for how much the above quote sounds just like our friend.

After all, what other words could better express a modest, humble and gracious hometown golf hero with a nickname like “Gentle Ben.”

process of maintaining and preserving the iconic structures that define the rustic, handcrafted look of the CCC.

With a call for greater appreciation of these historical re-sources, especially in light of the recent Bastrop fire, which

threatened one of the state’s most popular CCC-era destinations, Brandimarte and Reed profile twenty-nine parks, providing a descriptive history of each and information on its CCC company, the dates of CCC ac-tivity, and the CCC-built structures still ex-isting within the park. In a time when Texas state parks are in serious need of public

and financial support, Texas State Parks and the CCC will not only inform and entertain; it will also make readers aware of the urgency of valuing and protecting this unique part of the state’s cultural history.

PARK from Page 2

Cindy Brandimarte and her new book on State parks. CCC also created Zilker Park for the City of Austin.

Architectural vision of the new library along Shoal Creek and Lady Bird Lake.

Austin History Center Association, Inc. P. O. Box 2287Austin, Texas 78768

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Summer Reprisal of last summer’s the AHC “Beer Garden Social” at Scholz Garten.

April 13Opening event for the “In the Shadow” exhibit.

April 8New photo exhibit opens: “In the Shadow of the Live Music Capital of the World” in the David Earl Holt Photo Gallery.

January 31 2014 Angelina Eberly Luncheon at The Driskill featuring prominent Aus-tin journalists. 11:30AM coffee mixer, 12:00 Noon lunch.

February 25New exhibit opens: “Backwards in High Heels: Getting Austin Woman Elected 1842-1990” in the Grand Lobby and Hallway.

March 20–21Donate to AHCA via Amplify Austin.

Opening reception for exhibit “Backwards in High Heels” to be determined.

May 2014 AHCA Annual Meeting. Exact date and time to be determined.

Austin History Center (AHC), 810 Guadalupe (at 9th), Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 10AM – 6PM & Sunday Noon – 6PM

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