Preservationists hold out hope for Norwood House restoration project

After a number of setbacks, preservationists are once again eyeing a decadeslong project to return a historic 1920s bungalow overlooking Lady Bird Lake to its former splendor.

The Norwood House, which sits on public parkland bordering Interstate 35 and Riverside Drive, has undergone extensive rehabilitation since the launching of a city-backed restoration project in 2013. With $2.8 million in public and private funding, the home seemed poised for full-fledged renovation until rising building costs raised the price tag ever so slightly out of reach.

“The all-volunteer Norwood Park Foundation developed shovel-ready plans to restore the house to be used as a self-sustaining asset for the Austin Parks Department,” said conservation biologist Clifton Ladd at a Historic Landmark Commission meeting earlier this month. “The original Norwood House Foundation has since dissolved … but a new community-based effort is now working to pick up where the previous foundation left off.”

The home was once part of a sprawling estate built by Ollie Norwood, an investor and bond broker perhaps better known for constructing the 16-story Gothic Revival Norwood Tower in downtown Austin. Developers vied for the lake-front real estate with little interest in the modest bungalow following Norwood’s death in 1961, with one buyer in 1984 ripping the structure from its foundation before losing the land to financial pressures.

The city purchased the estate in 1985 for use as public parkland, and the decades since have seen the home grow increasingly dilapidated. Efforts to revitalize the property for civic use date back to the 1990s, with the Women’s Chamber of Commerce successfully funding the home’s relocation to its original overlook in 1999.

In 2008, neighborhood group South River City Citizens took up the torch, leading a campaign to restore and reopen the bungalow for public event rentals that secured City Council endorsement in 2010. In 2012, the group formed the nonprofit Norwood Park Foundation, reaching an agreement with the City’s Parks Department to begin restoration efforts in 2013.

By 2015, the project had seen considerable progress, including restabilization of the home’s foundation and the pruning of surrounding trees to restore the original view of Lady Bird Lake. An ambitious second phase of architectural and landscape restoration was expected to begin last summer after a 2018 parks bond and special allocation of hotel occupancy tax income added millions in public funding to the project’s coffers. Then, at the last minute, post-pandemic spikes in building costs put the project on hold.

“We had $2.8 million in public and private funds set aside and ready for that project, and we had a contractor ready to start work on it,” Ladd said. “But the cost rose about $150,000 because of the pandemic, which brought the whole project to a halt. The Parks Department recently reassigned the public funds and appears to have no plans for further restoration efforts.”

Preservationists are now seeking the help of the city’s Historic Landmark Commission to close the gap, hoping renewed interest at Council could see the long-sought restoration fully realized. In the meantime, those curious can check out the Norwood House Foundation website for further reading.

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Posted In: Preservation, District 9