Austin News

The City of Austin’s Historic Preservation Office recently completed a three-year project to recognize and honor Austin's communities representing the region's rich cultural heritage.

With an approach including traditional historic research and community storytelling, the Translating Community History project worked with community members of two East Austin neighborhoods to recognize people and places integral to Austin’s cultural heritage.

The National Park Service awarded the City of Austin’s Historic Preservation Office an Underrepresented Community Grant of $43,200 to research historically underrepresented communities listed in the National Register of Historic Places. A 2016 historic resources survey of Central East Austin identified 24 potential historic districts and approximately 300 potential historic landmarks, but was unable to generate widespread interest in historic preservation. 

The Translating Community History project developed a plan to approach community stakeholders with the proposal of preservation. Two community stakeholder groups comprised of representatives from local cultural organizations and focus area residents were formed to advise the project.

“We were fortunate to work with dedicated community members to guide the  project, and lucky to have grant funds to support a more creative approach,” Cara Bertron, a senior planner in the Housing & Planning Department, said. “Staff and the community stakeholder groups both saw the heritage projects as a way to connect people’s stories with historic neighborhoods in a really different way.”

The project is made up of three major components: neighborhood meetings and story-sharing focusing on parts of the East Cesar Chavez neighborhood and the College Heights subdivision in Blackshear Prospect Hill; National Register nominations for Huston-Tillotson University and Parque Zaragoza, two areas representing significant African American and Mexican American heritage and; multi-part heritage projects for each focus area.

Visitors can find more information about the project, National Register nominations, catalogs, and videos at the Historic Preservation Office website.