East Austin Barrio Landmarks Project

Green & White Grocery (1936)

Preservation Austin is proud to share our East Austin Barrio Landmarks Project, which honors the historic and cultural significance of East Austin's Mexican American community. In 2021 our board of directors adopted Underrepresented Heritage as an Advocacy Priority, showing our commitment to saving places of meaning for our city's African American, Mexican American, Native American, and LGBTQ+ communities, and also women. This project continues the necessary task of celebrating sites that reflect Austin’s diverse history.

Preservation Austin’s 2021-2022 Fowler Family Foundation Underrepresented Heritage Interns, Katherine Enders and Catalina Cherñavvsky Sequeira, prepared this outstanding content. Over the course of several months, they conducted extensive archival research and connected with community members to document significant Mexican American heritage sites in East Austin and downtown. Their work includes:

  • A self-guided bike tour engaging participants in twenty-five cultural and architectural sites across East Austin and downtown;

  • Six in-depth articles on our blog which dive into these histories further;

  • Five state historical marker applications, compiled in partnership with the Travis County Historical Commission, to interpret these sites to the public;

  • An in-depth guide to the Holly Street Murals

  • Over 140 pages of research, which we will share with any community advocates seeking to preserve and document this history moving forward.

Preservation Austin would like to sincerely thank all those who have supported this project, many of whom are lifetime East Austinites. Their support was integral to the success and accuracy of our project and we are grateful to them for sharing their histories with us.

Please contact Executive Director Lindsey Derrington (lindsey@preservationaustin.org) for questions and for additional research on these sites.

self-guided tour

Estrada’s Cleaners (1962)

This 12-mile route features twenty-five sites of Mexican American heritage in East and Central Austin, including Estrada’s Cleaners and the iconic Tejano bar, La Perla. Tour materials in English and Spanish, as well as a GPS-enabled bike route, are available below. See our complete archive of self-guided tours HERE.

BLOG SERIES

Briones House (1947-1953)

A series of in-depth blog posts on several featured sites from the self-guided tour, this content goes deeper into the archival research and community knowledge documented for this project.

holly street mural guide

For la Raza, Roberta Herrera, restored in 2018

Prepared in collaboration with Arte Texas for our 2022 “Out of the House” Spring Tour, which featured the Holly Street Murals.

Preservation Austin is indebted to the Fowler Family Foundation for supporting this work and making this project possible.