AUSTIN / THE MAP ARCHIVE
Austin’s city and suburbs map, 1919
Congress Avenue is easy to find. The surprise is how quickly the close-set blocks give way to acreage, winding roads and large tracts of land. Explore the map cataloged as Austin’s 1919 city-and-suburbs plan, then look at its printed details: this particular sheet carries a 1925 copyright date.
Explore the mapTHE MAP AT A GLANCE
A closer look
at 1919.
Dates, details and the people behind the drawing.
- Archive date
- 1919
The date used by the Texas State Archives catalog and the original TexasFreeway entry.
- Printed copyright date
- 1925
Visible in the title block of this displayed sheet.
- Mapmaker
- Dixon B. Penick
The sheet identifies Penick as the compiling and drafting civil engineer.
- Map type
- Streets & suburbs
A street map with land divisions, railroads and a detailed symbol key.
1919 · Austin
Drag to explore. Use the zoom buttons or pinch with two fingers. Keyboard: focus the map, then use arrow keys to move, +/− to zoom and Home to reset.
LOOK CLOSER / EDITORIAL NOTES
Find it on the map.
Start with the legend
The key at the lower left distinguishes paved streets from graded streets and marks railroads, buildings and bridges. A street name alone won’t tell you what the trip along it was like.
Follow the river west
Find the bridge at Congress Avenue, then follow the Colorado toward the dam at the left edge. The river bends around the city while streets and rail lines choose their own routes across and beside it.
Find a familiar neighborhood
Hyde Park, Travis Heights and Camp Mabry are labeled on the sheet. Compare their shapes with the tight downtown grid; the map gives you several different kinds of Austin within a single frame.
AUSTIN / HISTORICAL CONTEXT
An Austin street address had a bigger story.
Dixon B. Penick’s map records more than routes from one place to another. Streets, individual blocks and larger landholdings share the same sheet. Downtown, the drawing becomes dense with small divisions. Toward the edges, named tracts take up much more room. You can follow the change without knowing a single address.
The legend is worth a stop before you zoom into your favorite neighborhood. It separates street treatments and includes railroads, bridges and buildings. Those distinctions add something a modern route map tends to leave out: the physical character of the route. Two streets drawn side by side did not necessarily offer the same surface.
There is also a date worth checking. Both the original TexasFreeway entry and the Texas State Archives catalog identify this work as 1919. The displayed sheet, however, reads “Copyright 1925 by Dixon B. Penick.” We retain the archive’s 1919 title and make that printed date visible here; the drawing should not be treated as proof that every feature shown was already present in 1919.
PRESERVED FROM THE HISTORICAL WEBSITE
The City of Austin and Suburbs, 1919
Created 09-July-2004
Publisher: Penick Engineering Company, Austin, Texas, 1919.
Cartographer: Penick, Dixon B., Engineering Co., 1919
Courtesy of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission
Sources & further reading
New editorial notes accompany the preserved archive description. The viewer uses the original map tiles; the full-size JPG assembles those tiles into one image.