The three homes located on Park Lane, Monroe Street and Rutherford Place are all within the Travis Heights-Fairview Park Historic District, the 353-acre area west of South Congress Avenue that was listed in the National Register of Historic Places last July. Each of the homes were noted as properties contributing to the residential historic district's distinctive development patterns and architectural styles.
Votes by the Austin Historic Landmark Commission Jan. 25 could see one of the homes, 201 Park Lane, headed for demolition, while decisions on two other demolition requests were pushed to February.
The owners of 201 Park said they plan to tear down the 1930s duplex and that its historic value has been lost after many of its original features were removed or renovated. Landmark commissioners reluctantly moved to allow the demolition—which cannot proceed until the property owners' plans for redevelopment are reviewed by the commission—and also requested they consider rehabilitation rather than a teardown, given the neighborhood's historic status and the need for affordable spaces in the area.
"It doesn't feel like this arises to the standards that we keep as possibly being historic, but that this used to be a duplex and it became a single-family home, I find unfortunate," Commissioner Witt Featherston said. "I think that we’re taking a fifth of an acre so close to the heart of downtown and the infrastructure that we’ve invested there as a community and a society and it’s going to be single-family home is unfortunate.”
Final votes to allow the demolition of the other two area properties—an early 1920s bungalow at 512 E. Monroe St. and an early 1930s two-story duplex at 804 Rutherford Place—were postponed until next month. Commissioners and community members also highlighted the contributions they said both structures bring to the historic district as reasons to avoid demolition in favor of restoration, if possible, especially in the case of the Rutherford property, which was identified as the only local example of an "eclectic" architectural mixture of Mission, Tudor Revival and Swiss styles.
“This is a very unique house in our National Register district. I can't think of another one that looks anything like it," resident Clifton Ladd said of the Rutherford duplex.
While applicants for that structure's demolition were not present at the January commission meeting, owners of the Monroe Street home said they plan to go through the commission's architectural review process to possibly develop an alternative plan for the home's future.
