Copyright 2022 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any website content. (What’s a WABAC Machine? Find out here.)
2022 • HISTORY OF BRENTWOOD, CRESTVIEW, AND MORE . . .
JANUARY
January 29 • A unique Brentwood/Crestview map (left) was given to a neighbor, its fourth owner, through Crestview’s Buy Nothing group. Ryan Eberly made the map and gave it to a neighbor. It’s been passed on twice through the group.
MARCH
March 6 • Neighbor Gladys Gresser died.
• More about Gladys—Some Good Neighbors Remembered (2022).
March 14 • The Allandale Plant Stand, where neighbors can leave and/or take plants, pots, and gardening supplies, was established.
APRIL
April 18 • The Austin Art Commission and Art in Public Places panel approved the artist team of Jeff Grauzer, Courtney Bee Peterson, and Michael Mendoza to create a public art project for the Burnet Road corridor. They were selected from a pool of 36 applications by a jury that included Crestview neighbors Susan Burneson and Anne-Charlotte Patterson. The artist team’s community engagement activities began later in the year (see November, below). “A Lord of the Plains: A Tribute to Quanah Parker” is an earlier public art project by the team.
April 30 • Hyde Park’s Baker School, attended by Brentwood neighbor Al Kirby in the early 1940s, was a featured site on the Preservation Austin annual tour. After Esperanza School on Burnet Road closed in 1941, Baker (built in 1911), Rosedale (1948), and then Brentwood (1951) served our area’s elementary students. Alamo Drafthouse purchased Baker from AISD in 2017 and restored it. In 2020, the Austin Historic Landmark Commission approved historic zoning for Baker School.
MAY
May 3 • Final draft of amendments to the Austin Strategic Mobility Plan published.
• More about Brentwood’s involvement in the process in the BNA newsletter, page 1.
May 5 • Crestview neighbor Ann May “Annie” Haydon Wingfield, 101, died.
• More about Annie—Some Good Neighbors Remembered (2022).
May 20 • Violet Crown Clubhouse named “Best Homegrown Hangout” by the Austin Chronicle.
May 27 • Goodbye School / Hello, Summer Potluck & Picnic in Brentwood Park, sponsored by local nonprofit Violet Crown Community Works. (VCCW’s spring Violet Crown Festival, traditionally the first Saturday in May, was not held this year.)
JUNE
“Arrival,” the first chapter of a memoir by artist and Brentwood neighbor Jean Graham, appeared in the Blazing Star Journal. The journal is published by AgArts, an Iowa-based organization that “imagines and promotes healthy food systems through the arts.” (Iowa Landscape, linocut by Jean at age 14, below.)
June 4 • Memorial held in Austin for Jarrod Papen, former popular barber at Crestview Barber Shop. He later moved to San Antonio, where he died unexpectedly on May 14.
June 21 • North Shoal Creek neighbor Tim Keough posted an online remembrance of a favorite neighbor, Mary. He wrote, in part, “I am writing this is because Mary had very few friends, maybe one or two besides me, and no family. And no one to write an obituary or celebrate her life . . . I wanted to share and honor the essence of my own memory and experience of my dear elderly neighbor.”
• More of Tim’s memories of Mary—Some Good Neighbors Remembered (2022).
June 22 • Artist and Skyview neighbor Kathy Ortiz posted a photo of her new mosaic (below), adding, “I got this finished for yesterday’s solstice.”
June 23 • Good news in the Austin American-Statesman about the original Threadgill’s, at 6416 North Lamar. The Austin Historic Landmark Commission denied the developer’s request to tear it down. Kenneth Threadgill opened the “gas station and beer joint” in 1933, and it became an iconic Austin music venue. It later was owned by Eddie Wilson and closed in 2020. • According to HLC Chair Terri Myers, the commission “determined that the [building conveys] a good sense of history and has exceptionally significant historic associations. . . . In a city that identifies itself as the live music capital of the world it would not be appropriate . . . to approve the demolition of the place where Janis Joplin got her start, along with the many other local musicians who gave Austin its reputation and justification for that claim.” New construction was allowed on the site, she added, “with the understanding that Threadgill’s be front and center, restored, and treated with the respect it earned as a major incubator for musicians and the nascent music scene in Austin.” • In more good news for iconic music venues, the Austin City Council initiated historic zoning for the Broken Spoke, at the other end of Lamar in South Austin. Update: The Broken Spoke’s Texas Historical Marker Dedication was held April 12, 2023.
JULY
July 19 • Brentwood neighbor, photographer, musician (and more) Al Evans died.
• More about Al—Some Good Neighbors Remembered (2022).
AUGUST
August 15 • The newly renovated Brentwood Elementary School reopened. Its new address—6703 Yates Avenue. (See also November 1.)
August 28 • Community Mixer at Episcopal Church of the Resurrection. Featuring news of the November 5 Oktoberbest, sponsored by Violet Crown Community Works, and the Crestview Village development planned for the northwest corner of Justin and Lamar. The event was sponsored by VCCW, the Ryan Drive Working Group, the Office of Council Member Leslie Pool, and Crestview Village.
SEPTEMBER
September 5 • The Brentwood Neighborhood Association Labor Day Parade, a longtime tradition, in Brentwood Park. After no parades in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic, this year’s event had “the largest turnout and longest parade in memory.”
• More in the BNA newsletter (page 2).
September 10 • Shayla Fleshman’s original 2004 story about neighborhood icon Domino the Violet Crown Pig (on the mosaic Wall of Welcome, left—tap to enlarge) was updated on the Violet Crown Community Works website. Shayla was a founding VCCW board member and longtime festival volunteer.
• Watch First Night W / Domino & Friends, the 2006 film about Domino.
September 15 • Barbara Zimmerman, longtime Brentwood neighbor, Violet Crown Community Works board member, and Violet Crown Festival volunteer, died.
• More about Barbara—Some Good Neighbors Remembered (2022).
September 24 • North ATX Good Neighbor Fest, held at St. Mark United Methodist Church, 601 West Braker Lane. The event offered innovative activities to help neighbors interact and create a strong community, including The Living Room Conversation, Meaningful Mural, Chalkboard Wall, and Postcard Station, as well as international food vendors, kids’ activities, and music.
OCTOBER
October 6 • Marion Prellop died. She and her husband Herb and sons Michael and Ronnie owned Crestview Minimax IGA for more than six decades, until it closed in 2016. It was replaced by Arlan’s and most recently by Fresh Plus in the Crestview Shopping Center. Herb died February 15, 1991, and their son Michael died October 8, 2019.
October 11 • Preservation Austin announced that Garden Seventeen was one of 11 recipients of PA’s Preservation Merit Awards. Garden Seventeen is just east of Brentwood at 604 Williams Street. As early as the 1920s, the structure was an airplane hangar at another site. After it was moved to its current location, it housed the Rainhart Company, a manufacturing facility, and opened as a retail garden center in June 2020. (It closed in June 2023.)
October 22 • St. Louis King of France Catholic Church celebrated its 70th anniversary with a Family Fun Day.
October 26 • KXAN reported that Genuine Joe Coffeehouse is looking for a new home and raising funds to help it relocate. The Anderson Lane property has been sold, and new construction is planned for the site. (As of 2023, Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, on the northeast corner of Burnet and Justin, has offered space to Genuine Joe.)
October 29 • First-ever G.I.F.T. Fest, with activities for “families, gardeners, craft beverage lovers, deep thinkers, music fans, neighborhood folks, and generally friendly people.” G.I.F.T. (Grow. Inspire. Feed. Teach.) is a community center in Crestview, hosted by the Episcopal Church of the Resurrection.
NOVEMBER
The artist team selected for the Burnet Road public art project (see April, above) continued its community outreach, including a survey and conversations with neighbors in Allandale, Brentwood, and Crestview.
Artist and Brentwood neighbor Jean Graham, creator of mosaic murals on Woodrow Avenue and at Brentwood Elementary (below), is one of 128 artists featured in the new book ATX Urban Art by muralist and public artist J Muzacz. The 678-page book focuses on graffiti, street art, murals and mosaics in Austin.
November 1 • Brentwood Elementary School Open House. Murals by local artists Jean Graham (left) and Evan Hildebrandt (below) grace interior walls of the newly renovated school. Evan is a former Brentwood Elementary student. Jean’s mosaic mural was originally installed in 2004 on an exterior wall of the school. Before the school’s renovation, Jean and a small team of others carefully removed the wall and stored it until it could be reinstalled. In addition to the mosaic Wall of Welcome, Jean also created the Domino the Violet Crown Pig puppet, a popular attraction at local events.
November 5 • Fifth Annual Oktoberfest in Brentwood Park, sponsored by Violet Crown Community Works. VCCW announced the first three recipients of its Microgrant Program—Blowcomotion, MACares at McCallum High School, and Webb Middle School student support initiatives.
• Local nonprofits and other organizations can apply for the VCCW Microgrant here.
• More about the event in the BNA newsletter, page 2.
November 13 • The Violet Crown Clubhouse announced it was closing on January 15. It opened in 2019 in the space occupied for 53 years by the Crestview Pharmacy. A Brentwood couple plans to open a coffee shop and natural wine bar there in Spring 2023.
November 14 • Neighborhood Helpers Free Pantry announced it has moved to an indoor facility. Located near Murchison Middle School in Northwest Hills, it’s “open to everyone, 24/7. Please take anything you need, give what you can.”
• Contact—neighborhoodhelpers21@gmail.com
November 16 • News of a fire at the former Dart Bowl led VVC to discover “new history” about the longtime bowling alley, which closed in 2020. Justin Whitlock Dart Jr. was an owner of the original Burnet Road location. It opened in 1959 and was named for him. At the time, Dart was a student at UT-Austin and an aspiring businessman whose maternal grandfather founded Walgreens. At age 18, Dart contracted polio and was not expected to live. He found the good care and kindness he received at the Seventh Day Adventist Medical University in Los Angeles life changing. He also was inspired by the philosophy of pacifist Mohandas K. Gandhi: “Find your own truth, and then live it.” Dart became a champion for disability rights in college. He became a civil rights activist in the 50s, recognizing that “what the disabled movement was really about was civil rights.” Dart lived in Austin from the late 50s to the early 60s and again from the mid-70s to the mid-80s. His decades of effort on state and national levels were key to the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, signed in 1990. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1998. Dart died in 2002. According to a 2014 article, later Dart Bowl owners also advocated for people with disabilities, providing space for them to enjoy bowling through Special Olympics, Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired, and Austin Independent School District special needs adaptive physical education programs. Within a few weeks of the Dart Bowl fire in 2022, the building was demolished, with new construction planned for the site.
DECEMBER
Residents of the Austin Retirement and Nursing Center in Crestview received gifts and treats as part of the 2022 Holiday Drive for Nursing Home Seniors. A Crestview neighbor coordinated this year’s event for the ARNC.
• More info—Friends of North Austin Nursing Home Seniors Nextdoor group.
December 3 • The Big Chair (right) outside Violet Crown City Church on Woodrow was all ready for a visit by Santa and some holiday treats!
December 4 • Swedish Christmas Market and Santa Lucia Procession (below), Gethsemane Lutheran Church, north of Crestview in Georgian Acres.
December 11 • Twentieth anniversary “Waiting for the Light” event, featuring poetry readings and music. All Saints Episcopal Church, 209 West 27th St. in Austin. One of the longtime readers is Allandale neighbor Anne Province.
December 15 • The Austin Chronicle featured “10 Things to Eat in Austin’s International District,” the area along North Lamar, north of Crestview and 183. The list includes Ethiopian, Bengali, Iraqi, Greek, Vietnamese, Arabic, Cuban, Cajun, and Guatemalan dishes.
December 15 • Screening of the film GIFT, “exploring parallels between artists’ work and a gift economy,” Yarborough Branch, Austin Public Library, 2200 Hancock Drive. A discussion following featured members of Buy Nothing groups and Treasure City Thrift, a shop in East Austin.
• Local Buy Nothing groups—Buy Nothing Allandale (North) • Buy Nothing Brentwood (North) • Buy Nothing Crestview • Buy Nothing Rosedale / Allandale (South) / Brentwood (South)
December 16 • Writer Lauren Cook and illustrator Melanie Muenchinger celebrated the publication of their new book, Domino’s Dots, at Brentwood Social House. The book (right) was inspired by the real-life story of Domino, a young, spotted, wild pig that escaped from the petting zoo at the first Violet Crown Festival, May 17, 2003. The rest, as they say, is history.
December 17 • BookWoman’s 47th anniversary celebration, featuring readings by local authors. The bookstore is east of Brentwood at 5501 North Lamar.
December 22-25 • Luminarias along Arroyo Seco in Brentwood and Crestview, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. The project began in 1994 in Brentwood and now includes Crestview, thanks to volunteers who light and extinguish the candles each day.
• More in the BNA newsletter, page 1.
COMING UP IN 2023
Twentieth anniversary of the spring Violet Crown Festival, first held May 17, 2003, a project of Violet Crown Community Works, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit helping build and sustain community in Brentwood and Crestview by supporting neighborhood enhancement projects.
History and community displays in the Community Tent (left), beginning with the first festival, grew into the Voices of the Violet Crown project.
