Historic apartments in Austin? (San Antonio, Round Rock: hardwood floors, rentals, condos)

[lululoo]

this is just an inquiry out of curiosity..

i recently visited some pals in austin and enjoyed it quite a bit, to the point where i toyed with the idea of moving there. but where are the "historic" apartments? by that, i mean anything in a building put up before 1950. i really like having an older place to call home, wanted to live downtown, and just couldn't find anything. my friends lived in little ranch houses on the edge of town and a building that looked like it had been converted from an old motel in the 1970s. did i miss something?

[twange]

Austin was a very tiny town before the 1960s so it doesn't have a lot of apartments built before then. It's also why there are not many hardwood floors(unless of course they've been added later). This is a bummer for me as well, as I currently live in an 85yr old house and I love the historical feel of that. But we've decided to just accept Austin for it's own thing and try and make our place(wherever that may be) interesting and "ours".

[Stevedawg]

Yeah thats a strange then about austin there isn't alot of older places. I'm from Virginia so I was used to the old houses and neighborhoods but that doesn't really exist much in Austin. Only old stuff I've seen in Texas was in San Antonio which has a pretty neat old historic downtown.

[love roses]

A lot of the towns around Austin have old, historic downtowns. But not many have old historic apartments. You can find lots of old 1800's homes and farmhouses in towns surrounding Austin, or near the old downtowns. Georgetown, Round Rock, Granger, Leander (All have some cool old homes)

[Esynthia]

Check out the Brown Building in Downtown. They've turned it into condos and the building was built in the 1940's i believe.

[homeinatx]

For rentals, there aren't any apartments - though there are a very few historic duplexes in Old West Austin, and off South Congress. Two bedroom houses built before 1940 are all over Central Austin, and those would be your best bet, if you want something older. They will have hardwood floors, but nothing grand, no built ins, stained glass windows, moldings etc . . . When I moved here from Chicago, I was horrified by the housing stock in Austin, but you get used to it. Rentals downtown are almost exclusively going to be new and expensive, but you could find a small old house in many of the adjoining neighborhoods for around $1000 and up, particularly east and south. Downtown San Antonio has some gorgeous old apartment buildings, but nothing like that here.

P.S. There is a spectacular Victorian mansion on 12th and Windsor that has been divided up into apartments, but that is the only one I know about in the whole city, and those apartments are much prized and hardly ever become available.

[orngkat]

There used to a lot of large, old houses turned into apartments around the UT area. They have been torn down over the years and replaced with newer structures.

[jooly]

There are a lot of old houses in and around Austin and some of them are rentals. You do not tend to get older apartment buildings, like in some larger cities. I lived in a nice old 1920's apartment in Chicago, and have never found anything similar here.

We are buying a nice old 1920's house though, and giving up our 1990's apartment currently. It will be nice to be in an older place again.

[TexasHorseLady]

Your best bet would be to look for a duplex or triplex. Try around the university (mostly north of it, North University and Hyde Park area), Clarksville, Enfield area, just south of the river. Pretty much between 2222 (which was way out in the boonies when I came here for college in 1969), Mopac (was a railroad back then with not much built around it), Oltorf, maybe I35 or a bit east of there. There used to be some lovely possibilities right near downtown (I lived in one briefly back in the 1960's), but most of them are gone, replaced with new upscale places.

[capcat]

I would look in the Enfield Road area. There are a few here and there. Not the center-city high rise apartments buildings you might find elsewhere, but some with charm. See the one called "Enfield" in the link below. Maybe not as old as you want, but an older apartment building.
Rainier Management - Apartments and apartment homes in Austin, Texas