Survey map in hand, volunteer organizers met with Greg Smith of the Texas Historical Commission today to check in on our progress toward creating a National Register Historic District for Travis Heights-Fairview Park.

After assessing our progress, we learned we now need to breaking up the sections of our district into their separate subdivisions, and research and write about their context within the neighborhood and in Austin. If you’re good at writing and research, please consider volunteering.

Oliver plays trumpet at the Wilkins-Heath House

Thanks to our resident history research completed last year at the Austin History Center, we can now delve into the personal stories of our neighborhood that describe our history.

• What is the story of South Austin’s development, as well as in our own neighborhood?
• What kind of people lived here and what did they do?
• Are the street patterns built around the Garden Plan, with meandering routes, or on a grid?

These are types of topics we need to include in our historical narrative for our application. We’ll also need to crunch the numbers from our survey, such as how many types of different architectural styles are represented.  All of this will inform the final historical narrative.

The other steps needed to complete our National Register application mostly include writing and editing. If you are interested in helping our project by donating your research and editing skills, please contact Melanie@historictravisheights.org.

If we can get this section of work done quickly, we can hand in our application to the state by November. It is a long process of editing and meetings but, optimistically,  if we meet that deadline, we may have our designation by this time next year.