The Driskill Hotel

Driskill Hotel NW Corner of East 6th and Brazos Streets

In the Southwest, there are many under appreciated and nearly forgotten architectural structures from the last quarter of the nineteenth century. We move in and out of their walls never really wondering what the original intent was or caring to know who walked their floors. Dry goods stores, cattle feeds and brothels repurposed today as quaint restaurants, bars and boutique shops. Someone might remind us. We need to be reminded to wonder what it was like back then to stand in a building or who we might have talked to. But one building which has remained, hanging on to its original intent, is The Driskill Hotel. There is a familiarity I can't define. It isn’t the furnishings, the marble columns or the stained glass domes. The walls almost breathe the same air.

In the bar where I began to imbibe several pints of Guinness

In 1884, a wealthy cattle baron named Jesse Driskill purchased a plot of land for $7,500 in Austin, Texas. He was successful before, an honorary Confederate Colonel during the Civil War now rich from trading livestock, he tried his luck as a hotelier. He hired the architect Jasper Preston to build a high-style Richard Romanesque hotel. Many people thought he was mad. His plans were lavish and extravagant. But no one could deter him. The hotel on Sixth Street opened to the public on December 20, 1886. The structure cost Driskill $400,000, an enormous sum in those days. Christened The Driskill Hotel, it was called one of the finest hotels in the country. Merely a year later, Colonel Driskill began to have trouble. His livelihood was threatened by a nation-wide drought. At the turn of 1888, an exceptionally cold winter settled in and killed over 3,000 of his cattle. Driskill watched his fortune disappear. Desperate, he played his hand at a high-stakes poker game and placed the hotel on the table.

Driskill lost.

Three years later, he passed away.

It is said that since he was not able to enjoy his hotel in life, he does so in death. He makes his presence known. Cigar smoke fills guests’ rooms and bathroom lights flicker. The doors to the elevators open and no one steps out.

Colonel Driskill isn’t the only one to roam within the walls of the hotel. There have been several suicide deaths in the rooms by jilted brides. One can be seen wandering the halls in her wedding gown. A four-year old girl who tragically died skips down the steps bouncing her ball, and a resident of the hotel from 1886-1916 checks his pocket watch.

Though I didn’t see anything the night I was there, I couldn’t help but think of Jesse Driskill. The concierge told me that some guests have called the front desk to say they awoke in the middle of the night. Something was trying to push them out of bed.

Top image from Austin's Public Library; the remainder from my phone using the Hipstamatic app. I was certain I was consciously standing to get dead-on center shots. It was either the Guinnesses or Colonel Driskill who leaned me sideways.

Yeeeeee-Haaaaawwwwwwwwwww..........

Darren Hoff & The Hard Times playing in the background

Architect Barbie:: helpful or harmful?

About a foot high and made of synthetic materials that smelled like expensive plastic, Barbie made her debut on March 9, 1959. Back then, Barbie was a teenage fashion model. But over the decades, she quickly climbed the corporate ladder. Her résumé includes stints as an astronaut, ballerina, babysitter, surgeon and doctor. She then decided to become an aerobics instructor, art teacher, race car driver, paleontologist, firefighter, the guest editor of a fashion magazine, and, yes, a cashier at McDonald's.

But this time, Barbie somehow squeezed in five years of architecture school, took an internship and passed her ARE (Architectural Registration Exam), and made her debut as an architect. She wears a hard hat now and carries a set of construction documents. But she is also wearing a sporty cropped black jacket, a trendy dress, hipster glasses and unflattering ankle boots.

Heels may be fine for the office, but not on the job site. It’s a little tricky traipsing through mud and concrete or balancing on steel beams. Mattel seemed to forget to show her with a rounded back from 80 hours a week hunched over a drafting table and a claw for a hand gripping the mouse doing endless CAD edits. And really, her belly should be pouched and flabby from hours of sitting and eating a bad diet; her face pale and corpse-like from lack of exercise; her lips chewed to a frazzle from the pressures of deadlines. Her hair should show two months of root growth. She’s so busy she couldn’t get to the salon. Her accessories need include a Starbucks grande latte with a double shot of espresso, chased by a few slugs of Pepto-Bismol, and a prescription of anti-anxiety pills in her desk drawer.