Hyde Park

photo by Kevin Surbaugh

Inscription:
 Advertised in 1892 as “The most fashionable part of the wealthiest and most aristocratic ward in the city”, Hyde Park was Austin’s first planned suburb. Encompassing an area bordered by the present streets of Guadalupe, 38th, Duval, and 45th, it was promoted by Monroe M. Shipe (1847-1924), President of the Austin Rapid Transit Railway Co. and the M.K.&T. Land and Town Co.

Shipe arranged for an electric streetcar line to run from Congress avenue to Hyde Park. He built a lake and pavilion for recreation and had the city’s first moonlight tower erected at the corner of Speedway and 41st Street. He also built the first Hyde Park school and by 1893 forty homes had been built in the neighborhood.

Among the area’s illustrious early residents, whose homes still remain, were sculptress Elisabet Ney; Swiss woodcarver Peter Mansbendel; and horticulturist F.T. Ramsey. By the early 1900s the large Victorian homes in the neighborhood were being joined by smaller bungalows. The lake was drained and the pavilion was razed. Hyde Park was within the city limits of Austin by the 1930s and the streetcar ceased operation in the 1940s. Renewed interest in the 1970s resulted in revitalization of the neighborhood.

Erected:
 1989 (by Texas Historical Commission)

Hyde Park is over 100 years old. Platted in 1891 by the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Land and Town Co., Hyde Park was marketed under the direction of Monroe Martin Shipe as an affluent suburb featuring large, majestic residences. Completion of Shipe's streetcar line in 1891 provided a reliable transportation connection to downtown from the relatively isolated area. Trees were planted, parkland established, lakes created and a theater pavilion erected to augment the pastoral quality of the area, which was marketed as the "fashionable part of the wealthiest and most aristocratic city in the land." The first houses built in the neighborhood were stylistically pretentious examples of late 19th-century domestic architecture. Many of them, such as the Oliphant-Walker House at 3900 Avenue C, were built in the Queen Anne style by locally prominent citizens.

Shipe's vision of Hyde Park as a self-sufficient community led him to provide municipal services, including mail delivery, street lighting, and sanitation, as well as to encourage churches, schools and stores to locate in the neighborhood. Residents early on had access to establishments such as the Avenue B Grocery (4403 Avenue B) and the Hyde Park Presbyterian Church (3915 Avenue B).

Despite these early promotions, however, sluggish land sales prompted considerable changes in marketing strategies within eight years of Hyde Park's founding. Shipe ceased to advertise the area for the city's elite, and instead portrayed it as a neighborhood for the middle and working classes. In response, Hyde Park's architectural character shifted to smaller, more modest frame houses. While fairly steady growth characterized the addition throughout the first decades of this century, its greatest building boom occurred between 1924 and 1935. The preponderance of bungalows in the neighborhood was the result of construction during this period. Popular across the nation from the 1910s through the 1930s, bungalows, such as the Charles William Ramsdell House (4002 Avenue H), often were associated with early efforts in suburban development.

-- from the Texas Historical Commission

Location:
4301 Speedway, Austin TX 78751 (front yard of neighborhood fire station)


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