In step with all that socially distant urban walking you’ve been doing comes a new mobile guide to Austin architecture, from AIA Austin and the Austin Foundation for Architecture
The mobile-friendly website, the Guide to Austin Architecture, highlight places and spaces around the city, with texts about architecture style and its context, the history of a building as well as contemporary and historic images, all curated by local architects.
The sites are bundled into walking tours the first of which is “Austin’s Main Street,”a one-mile route on Congress Avenue from the Ann W. Richards Bridge to the state capitol. The tour spotlights 25 stops along the way.
“We are thrilled to provide a different tool for people to explore Austin in person or virtually in these unusual times,” said Ingrid Spencer, executive director of AIA Austin and the Foundation.
“Austin’s Main Street” includes well-known historic buildings such as the Scarborough Building (1910) and Norwood Tower (1929), but also jazz club the Elephant Room which is in the basement of the 1905 Swift Building and the street patios that have emerged in recent years.
The tour is curated by Riley Triggs, n architect for the Texas Historical Commission, and Bud Franck, an architect at award-winning firm Miró Rivera Architects.
More walking tours are in the works.
