Updated September 25, 2023

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Final blog post in this series, in which we introduce a few special neighbors-in-history who have contributed to our sense of place here. (See links for more info.)

KOENIG • McCULLOUGH

By 1946, Dr. Joseph Samuel Koenig (1885-1951) and Clarence McCullough (1898-1992) developed Section 1 of Violet Crown Heights, between Payne and Ruth in the Brentwood neighborhood. (See the 1947 promotional flyer for Violet Crown Heights here.) They began developing Section 2, between Payne and Koenig Lane, by 1948, and the Violet Crown Shopping Center by 1950. Koenig Lane was named for Dr. Koenig. (See A Few Stories About Street Names, Part 2, including Karen, Koenig, Leralynn, and Ruth.)

Dr. Koenig was born in LaGrange, Texas, the son of John Robert Koenig Sr. and Charlotte Wilhelmine Schwake Koenig. Joe married Lera Lynn Pennington in Bell County, Texas, in February 1911. They moved from Smithville to Austin about 1921. He became a chiropodist and later an insurance executive, as well as a real estate developer. By the 1920s, Dr. Koenig and his wife owned property in at least four subdivisions near the future Koenig Lane—Koenig Place, Koenig Terrace, Murray Place, and Northfield (they also owned property in Arboles Terrace, south of Barton Springs Road). Their residences included 4209 Avenue E (Speedway) in 1930, 108 Laurel Lane in 1940, and 606A East 23rd St. in 1950 (now part of the University of Texas campus). A 1937 classified ad listed a Koenig Farm on Fiskville Road (today’s North Lamar), then outside the Austin city limits and likely part of Dr. Koenig’s property. Dr. Koenig died in 1951, and his wife, Lera Lynn, in 1960.

More about Dr. Koenig’s family: His paternal grandparents, John and Anna Meyer Koenig, who emigrated from Germany, and his maternal grandmother’s parents, Florian and Fredrica Meyer, who emigrated from Austria, died in the 1867 yellow fever epidemic in LaGrange, Texas. In 1928, Dr. Koenig’s brother John R. Koenig Jr. moved to Travis County and owned the large Koenig Ranch, in Cedar Valley west of RM 1826 and south of 290. According to his 2003 obituary, John’s son Marvin Robert Koenig Sr. “was involved in operating [the Koenig Ranch] and developing the family’s land in the Koenig Lane area of Austin.”

Clarence McCullough was born in Waller County, Texas, in 1898, the son of Ellis D. and Mary Alice Moore McCullough. His father and paternal grandparents were born in Tennessee and moved to Texas, where they settled in Taylor. By 1900, Mr. McCullough, his parents, and two siblings moved to Manor, Texas, where they grew cotton. By 1910, they had moved to Austin, and Mr. McCullough remembered riding a horse to Austin High School. His first job was at the E. M. Scarbrough & Sons department store. After serving in World War I, he worked at a bank for a time and then became a real estate developer. He also served on the board of First City Bank for almost 40 years. In 1930, Clarence McCullough and his wife, Ruth Huddleston McCullough, lived at 1410 Travis Heights Blvd. According to Clarence’s son Chuck, in 1938 his parents built a house for $8,000 at 2514 Wooldridge in Pemberton Heights. They lived there for many years. Mr. McCullough died in 1992 and his wife, Ruth, in 1993.

Chuck later managed the Violet Crown Shopping Center in the 6600 block of North Lamar Boulevard in Austin. The center was developed by his father and Dr. Koenig, and had offices there. He was founder and president of the Avtec Corporation, and for a time the center was renamed the Violet Crown Telecom Center. Susan Burneson and Sandra Miron interviewed Chuck before the first Violet Crown Festival held on May 17, 2003. He died in 2018.

McCANDLESS

Lindon Leslie (Dude) McCandless was the son of blacksmith William Lee McCandless and his wife Alice Lamb McCandless. Although he never lived in Brentwood or Crestview, Dude contributed to a wide range of projects in the Austin area, including:

• Burnet Heights (now Northwest) Shopping Center, originally with Big Bear grocery store on the north end. The center, which opened in July 1949, is on the northeast corner of Burnet Road and Koenig Lane. It was among the earliest shopping centers in Austin, second only to Tarrytown Shopping Center, developed in 1939.
• Burnet Heights subdivision (1940s), east of the center.
• McCandless Street in the Skyland Terrace subdivision of Brentwood (1946).
• 60 homes in the Shoalmont subdivision of Rosedale (1946).
• At least 30 homes in the Skyview subdivision, former site of French Rudolph (Doc) Haile’s airport, east of Brentwood (1948).
• Terrace Motor Hotel on South Congress (1951). Dude used an old hangar from Doc Haile’s airport to store charcoal, shipped in by the ton from Tennessee for use in the Terrace’s restaurants. Willie Nelson bought the entire Terrace property from Dude in 1977. Part of it became a popular music venue, later known as the Austin Opera House, until it closed in 1992. Today, part of the opera house property is home to Arlyn Studios, at 200 Academy.
• Skyview Baptist Church, established in 1952. Dude donated the property at 211 West Koenig Lane to the church in memory of his mother, Alice Lamb McCandless, who died in 1948.
• The Villa Capri Hotel near UT (1957).
• 48 acres of the Berkman Tract in northeast Austin (1964).
• Emerald Bend and The Island on Lake Travis (1967).
• Prefabricated homes through his company Ready-Built Homes, including one purchased by Lyndon Baines Johnson for use on one of his ranches near Johnson City, Texas.
• Owner of Ace Lumber Company.

In 1948, Dude and his first wife, Ocie Lee Miles McCandless, bought three lots in the Wilshire Wood subdivision of Austin, where they built a 4200-square-foot home at 4101 Wildwood Road. A 1941 ad described Wilshire Wood as designed “primarily for gentle folk of limited budget but of unlimited good taste,” with winding roads through “virgin forest.” Its developers also had created Pemberton Heights in West Austin. Ocie died in 1979. Dude died in 1991 and his second wife, Lotus Illene Moore Cone McCandless, in 2015. Lotus shared details of her husband’s contributions in the 1996 edition of Rosedale Rambles, researched and written by Karen Collins of the Rosedale neighborhood of Austin.

RICHCREEK

Frank Owen Richcreek (1872-1942) owned land north and west of today’s Justin Lane and North Lamar and adjacent to what was then the James Daugherty Doxey property to the north, up to today’s Anderson Lane. In 1947, his farm began to be developed as the Crestview neighborhood.

The first section, Crestview Addition No. 1, is between West St. Johns and Justin Lane (including property on the south side of Justin between Reese and Hardy). Richcreek Road, left, developed later in Crestview, is named for the family. Crestview’s northern boundary today is the south side of Anderson Lane.

Former Brentwood neighbor Al Kirby, who moved with his family to a farm on North Street about 1940, remembered meeting Frank Richcreek and described him as a “fine old gentleman.” Richcreek let him sit on his barn to watch movies at Eddie Joseph’s North Austin Drive-in, which opened in 1940 on the southwest corner of today’s Justin and Lamar and south of the Richcreek farm. Crestview neighbor John Carlson remembers passing by Richcreek’s large red barn when his family came in to Austin from their farm south of Georgetown in the 1930s and the northern limits of Austin was 45th Street. (More of John’s story here.)

Richcreek’s ancestors were from Indiana. He was born in Missouri and his wife, Julia Ann Miller, in Indiana, where they married in 1896. All four of their children—Florence Opal (1898-1995), Ruby Rebecca (1902-1993), Dale Owen (1908-1939), and Galen Burdette (1919-2006)—were born in Indiana.

In the early 1920s, the Richcreek family moved to Hidalgo County, Texas, where Richcreek helped establish the town of Weslaco. The Richcreek home in Weslaco was designed by daughter Ruby in a California bungalow style and built by her father in 1923. (You can see an image of it here.)

By 1930, Frank and Julia Richcreek were living in Travis County (see the 1930 census image, right). Frank purchased 170 acres of land in 1931 and built a home soon after just north and west of today’s Justin and Lamar. Back then, it was beyond the Austin city limits. The house was set back from the road and had a long driveway.

The Richcreeks’ daughter Florence was an early teacher in the Weslaco, Texas, schools. In 1930, Florence, her first husband Monte Zuma Walker, and their daughter Elaine farmed near her parents north of Austin. Later she was a teacher at the one-room Cypress School in Cedar Park, Texas, near an 800-acre ranch owned by Monte and her. (A Williamson County history page features a history of the school and an oral history of Florence.)

Ruby married James Kimbrough Eichelberger Sr., who, like Frank, was born in Missouri. In the 1940s, Ruby was president of Capitol City Lumber Company. Its first location was on West 5th Street in Austin; a second location was just south of the rail line, at the site of the former Walker Tire, and property to the west of it. It later became Capitol Prefabricators Inc. In 1947, the Eichelbergers established ABC Blind & Drapery at 6221 North Lamar in Austin; their daughter Marjorie (Margie) and her husband Edgar Sanders Daugherty later owned it. Marjorie and Edgar’s former son-in-law operated it as of 2016.

Dale named his son and only child Frank Owen Richcreek, after his father. In 1939, Dale and another man, Lee B. Ragsdale, died in an accident as they dug a well on Dale’s property, near the intersection of Martin Luther King Junior and Airport boulevards in Austin, and it collapsed.

That year, Galen had a farm just north of the railroad, in the vicinity of today’s Crestview Station, west of the intersection of Airport and Lamar boulevards. Frank’s farm was just south of the railroad, according to the 1939 Austin city directory. Galen later became a policeman in Dallas and then moved to Kerrville, Texas, where he died.

In 1942, Frank and Julia Richcreek’s address was 6610 Georgetown Road (also called the Dallas Highway), just north of the intersection of Justin and Lamar. It was between the North Austin Drive-in (site of today’s Walgreen’s), southwest corner of Justin and Lamar, at 6600 and Granny’s restaurant and nightclub (near the former Walker Tire) at 6616, probably between Justin and the railroad track. (The numbers don’t match what is there today.) Frank had sold some of his property to Granville C. (Granny) Harber for his restaurant, which was described in a March 1942 newspaper ad as “a better place to dine and dance and spend an evening in recreation.” (Granny Harber later owned Chez Orleans, a popular seafood restaurant in Houston.)

Early Thanksgiving morning in November 1942, a fire broke out at Granny’s. Frank was outside, between his house and the restaurant. He stepped through a puddle, then accidentally came in contact with a downed power line and fell to the ground. According to a newspaper account, he quickly stood up and said he was fine when men nearby tried to help him but almost as quickly collapsed and died. Julia inherited the Richcreek property and sold some of it to Ruby and her husband. In 1947, the Austin Development Company (A. B. Beddow, President) purchased most of it. Justin Lane was built between North Lamar Boulevard and Burnet Road, and the Crestview neighborhood began to be developed. Julia Richcreek later moved to West Austin to live closer to her daughter, Ruby; she died in 1967. Julia is buried in Austin Memorial Park Cemetery, along with her husband, daughters Florence and Ruby and their husbands, and son Dale.

Ruby and James Eichelberger kept some of the original Richcreek farm when the rest was sold in 1947, including the land bordered by Justin, North Lamar, the railroad, and homes on the east side of Reese. The Eichelbergers owned two companies there, first the Capitol Lumber Company and then Capitol Prefabricators Inc., which was heavily damaged by fire in July 1947.

In September 2014, Marjorie (Margie) Eichelberger Daugherty visited a home at 1405 Justin Lane and confirmed that it was the original farmhouse of her grandparents, Frank Owen and Julia Ann Miller Richcreek. It was originally built in the early 1930s near the northwest corner of North Lamar Boulevard and Justin Lane on the Richcreek farm. It survived the nearby Capitol Prefabricators fire in July 1947 and was moved to 1405 Justin Lane in November of that year.

As of 2015, Margie Daugherty still owned property on the northwest corner of Lamar and Justin, near where the Richcreek home once stood. Margie died May 19, 2020, in Driftwood, Texas.

WUPPERMAN

Ernest Walter Wupperman (1907-1986) owned a veterinary practice on today’s North Lamar, north of Old Koenig Lane, from 1941-1976. In the early 1940s, Dr. Wupperman purchased property from Dr. Joseph S. Koenig (1885-1951) (see above). Veterinarians H. M. Spangler and his son S. C. Spangler bought the business from Dr. Wupperman in 1976, when he retired. For many years it was called the Wupperman-Spangler Animal Clinic. There also is a Wupperman Addition northwest of Lamar and Old Koenig Lane. Dr. Wupperman’s widow, Elizabeth Knox Rowe Wupperman, passed away on April 19, 2012.

Coming soon—more Voices of the Violet Crown!