“Nothing is ever reborn, but it never completely disappears either, everything that has ever been emerges in a new form.”
— Alvar Aalto, 20th-century Finnish architect
Scandinavian designer Alvar Aalto probably had some idea of how future generations would embrace his timeless quote. He was, after all, referring to timelessness itself. Everything old can be new again. Despite living in a time and country where the fast and profitable seem to win out over the historic and beautiful, and living in a town where week after week beloved buildings and sentimental treasures are lost to progress, a lot of stubborn diehards are at least attempting to preserve bits of cultural history. Now, granted, in our young 224 American years, we have a funny idea of what’s historic; Europe, for example, must have a good chuckle over what the USA considers old and classic (but then again, Asia and Africa must have hearty belly laughs over what’s considered the “Old World”).
When it comes to our urban landscape, we are babies.
“America the beautiful,
Let me sing of thee;
Burger King and Dairy Queen
From sea to shining sea.”
— Ada Louise Huxtable, architecture critic for The New York Times
Our disposable culture has produced an interesting phenomenon: The faster we turn over our urban landscape, the sooner we become nostalgic for our recent past. Even cultural clear-cutter McDonald’s is taking a shine to retro restyling, attempting to create a connection to its past. Many of their franchises are either being painted in the old “classic” red, yellow, and white or totally reconfigured with façades resembling the old “golden arches” walk-up counters. McDonald’s nostalgic? That’s just too funny.
Anyone who ever traveled Route 66, U.S. 1, or any of America’s mythical highway strips in the Sixties will remember life before Holiday Inn and the Motel 6. Traveling to destinations as diverse as grandma’s house, Monticello, the Grand Canyon, and Disneyland, vacationers couldn’t help but notice the unique neon beacons of tourist courts and motor inns dotting the American landscape. Surely, their emergence replaced something? And yet, only 40 years down the road, they too are almost lost … and some of us really miss them.
In the world of holidays and vacations, we live in the age of the mega-theme park and the monolithic super hotel. “Boutique hotels,” refurbished mom-and-pop motels, and bed & breakfasts are the human-scaled reactions against such formatted entertainment activities.
It’s about time.
Austin’s funky hotel and B&B scene is something we’ve wanted to explore for a while. Erica Barnett pitched the idea years ago, just about the time that the Austin Motel was making news regaining its former glory as a fixture of South Congress Avenue and as rumors began floating about that attorney Liz Lambert was planning on performing a similar resuscitation, turning Austin Motel’s neighbor to the south, the Hotel San Jose, into the Chateau Marmont of Central Texas.
Insane? Nah. … It isn’t unheard of, after all. The mid-Eighties were quite kind to a strip of architectural marvels in Florida called South Beach. Now the rescued Miami Beach deco district is mentioned in the same breath as Paris, Milan, and New York as important cultural destinations.
Our inadvertent theme for this year’s Summer Fun feature section is “Reuse, Recycle, Renew.” We had no intention of it being that. It just began popping up as a mantra in just about every place we investigated. We noticed it in obvious places like bed & breakfasts housed in official Texas State Landmarks and even in the strangest place … a popular theme park.
“We took the land and tried to work around it to preserve its natural beauty,” said Darren Hill, the resort manager of Schlitterbahn, a place we never figured we’d find the type of conservation and renovation that it indeed exhibits.
In each of the many local attractions listed herein, the current owners have demonstrated an admirable respect for history and an eager heart for honoring it as they update their dream projects to meet the needs of travelers in the 21st century. We obviously and regrettably couldn’t get to every B&B and hotel that might’ve fit this bill. We, have, however, listed many of those fine establishments here, for your convenience.
It was our pleasure to explore these many bed & breakfasts and accommodations, and we thank our gracious hosts. We’ve tried to cover a variety of styles and price ranges in our search, keeping in mind that not everyone has the same getaway needs. We considered couples looking for romantic in-town escapes, families and groups of friends looking to share quality time, and those of you out there with relatives coming into town for a visit. No need to keep them pent up in your place! We encourage you to venture out of the house this summer and get to know some of your local history and support these local concerns. Doing it while soaking in a bubbling Jacuzzi or sipping lemonade on a quintessentially Austin front porch sounds real good to us just about now.
Enjoy!
This article appears in May 26 • 2000.