Category Archives: Streets
Welcome!
Since 2003, my husband Rob and I have gathered, shared, and preserved stories of neighbors creating community through our project Voices of the Violet Crown. THE LATEST Blooming Where We’re Planted Just What Is a Violet Crown? Neighbors-in-History, Part 2—African-American Families A Green History of Brentwood & Crestview Fostering Community Through Oral History, Sound Historian, Texas Oral History Association For us, community is a continuum of past, present, and future. We believe that being a … Read more
Neighbors-in-History, Part 3
Updated September 25, 2023 Copyright 2012-2023 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any website content. 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 … Read more
A Few Stories About Street Names, Part 2
Updated September 25, 2023 Copyright 2011-2023 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Please talk with us before reproducing any website content. Our series on Central Austin street names—how they were named and what some of them once were called—continues. KAREN AVENUE—Named for a niece of Dr. Joseph S. Koenig. (See Koenig Lane, below.) KOENIG LANE—The first known description of the street appeared in the Austin American-Statesman on November 21, 1936: “the public lane sometimes known as … Read more
A Few Stories About Street Names, Part 1
Copyright 2011 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Please talk with us before reproducing any website content. Over the years, as we’ve talked with neighbors and looked into public records, we’ve learned how some of our Central Austin streets came to be named and what some of them once were called. Here’s Part 1 of what we’ve gathered so far. We invite you to share what you know about neighborhood streets by sending us an email … Read more
History of Hancock Creek/Arroyo Seco, Part 3
Copyright 2011-2022 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any content you find on the website. IS IT ARROYO SECO OR ARROYA SECA OR ARROYO SECA? When it was first named, the street Arroyo Seco, which runs along either side of Hancock Creek in much of Brentwood and Crestview, somehow was incorrectly spelled “Arroyo Seca” on street signs and in official documents. In the early 1950s, Brentwood Elementary School students taking … Read more
History of Hancock Creek/Arroyo Seco, Part 2
Copyright 2011-2023 Susan Burneson. All rights reserved. Kindly talk with us before reproducing any content you find on the website. Arroyo Seco means “dry creek” in Spanish. The term also refers to an intermittently dry creek — a good description of the waterway through our area today. Many neighbors still call this waterway Arroyo Seco (or Seca). On the United States Geological Survey Austin East map, it’s Hancock Creek. On City of Austin and Federal … Read more