About Austin

The home of South by Southwest (SXSW), the largest music festival of its kind in the world, Austin is the capitol of Texas and one of the country’s most rapidly growing cities. Known as “The Live Music Capitol of the World,” the 298 square mile city is named after Stephen F. Austin and was incorporated on December 27, 1839. The fastest growing large city in the country from 2015 to 2016, Austin is now the 11th-most populous city in the country with an estimated 964,254 residents. Due to its rapid growth, the city is in the midst of a linear skyscraper boom, due to policies intended to preserve view Texas State Capitol view corridors.

A Virtual Tour of Downtown Austin

1. Known locally as Dirty Sixth, East 6th Street has been recognized as a major entertainment district since the 1970s.

2. Home to many of Austin’s oldest buildings, a nine-block stretch of East Sixth Street was listed as a historic district on the National Register of Historic Places on December 30, 1975.

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4. Built by Colonel Jesse Driskill as the finest hotel south of St. Louis in 1886, The Driskill is the oldest operating hotel in Austin.

5. Intersection of East Sixth Street and Brazos Street.

6. The intersection of East Sixth Street and Congress Avenue

7. Envisioned to serve as Austin’s most prominent street in the 1839 Austin plan, Congress Avenue initially connected the State Capitol to the Colorado River.

8. *At 120 feet wide, Congress Avenue was designed to be the widest street in the original 1839 city plan. *

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10. The Congress Avenue Historic District was created on August 11, 1978.

11. The Contemporary Austin - Jones Center.

12. The Paramount Theatre originally opened in 1915. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on June 23, 1976.

13. The Old Bakery & Emporium on Congress Avenue features a visitor information center, art gallery and houses the Lundberg-Maerki Historical Collection.

14. *The Texas State Capitol was built between 1882 and *1888.

15. The University of Texas at Austin is the nation’s 8th largest college campus in the country by enrollment. Established in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System.