Westgate Tower
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
In 1962, the internationally-acclaimed architect Edward Durell Stone (1902-1978) of New York City and local firm Fehr & Granger designed the Westgate Tower, named for its location adjoining the west edge of the Texas State Capitol grounds. Designed for the Lumbermen's Investment Corporation of Austin, the Westgate Tower was the tallest building constructed in Austin during the 1960s at 261 feet in height. Under the leadership of Julian H. Zimmerman and in coordination with Stone, Austin's first residential high-rise opened in 1965 with apartments, parking, restaurant and social club. The mixed-use building is of poured-in-place, monolithic reinforced concrete clad in brown brick sourced from the locally-based Butler Brick Company, with full-length windows and individual balconettes between brick-faced columns. Decorative masonry solar screens, a distinctive characteristic of Stone's mid- twentieth-century Modern architecture, allow light to enter the parking garage and top two floors while offering privacy and shade from the Texas sun. The 26-story tower is arranged around a central core of elevators and a staircase, and all residential units open to expansive views of the Capitol grounds and city of Austin, a key element of Stone's design. Intended to serve as a prototype for other apartments and office Towers in Austin, the Westgate Tower has historically been home to many State Representatives and Senators, state employees, political activists and lobbyists, and local business leaders. Combining residential and commercial space, the Westgate Tower significantly contributed to the urban planning and development of downtown Austin. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2012
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Designed in 1962 by internationally acclaimed architect Edward Durell Stone with the Austin firm Fehr & Granger, the Westgate Tower rose beside the State Capitol grounds as the city's tallest building of the 1960s. Opened in 1965 as Austin's first residential high-rise, the 26-story concrete tower mixed apartments, parking, a restaurant, and a social club, its decorative masonry solar screens a signature of Stone's mid-century Modern style. For decades it housed legislators, lobbyists, and civic leaders drawn to its Capitol views.
Why it matters
The Westgate marked Austin's turn toward vertical, mixed-use downtown living and stands as a landmark of postwar Modern architecture by one of America's most celebrated designers.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
By the early 1960s, Austin was on the cusp of change. The Texas capital was still a relatively low-slung city, its skyline dominated by the dome of the State Capitol, but growth was coming. The postwar decades had brought new wealth, new confidence, and new ideas about how American cities should look and live. Downtowns across the country were beginning to reach upward, and to rethink whether people might live, and not just work, in the urban core.
This was also the golden age of mid-century Modern architecture, when celebrated designers reshaped the American landscape with clean lines, bold concrete forms, and inventive plays of light and shade. Into this moment stepped one of the most famous architects in the world, invited to design a building that would test whether Austinites would embrace vertical, mixed-use living beside their most cherished public space.
The result rose in the heart of the city, and its very location — hard against the west edge of the Capitol grounds — announced its ambition. Austin was about to get its first residential high-rise.
People & events
In 1962, the internationally acclaimed architect Edward Durell Stone, working out of New York City with the local firm Fehr & Granger, designed the Westgate Tower for the Lumbermen's Investment Corporation of Austin. Stone was a marquee name in American architecture, and his involvement gave the project real prestige. Under the leadership of Julian H. Zimmerman, and in close coordination with Stone, the tower opened in 1965.
What opened was something Austin had never seen: a 26-story building rising 261 feet, the tallest constructed in the city during the entire decade. It was a mixed-use landmark from the start, combining apartments with parking, a restaurant, and a social club — a whole way of urban living stacked into a single tower beside the Capitol.
The design carried Stone's signature touches. The building was poured-in-place, monolithic reinforced concrete, clad in brown brick from the locally-based Butler Brick Company, with full-length windows and individual balconettes set between brick-faced columns. Decorative masonry solar screens — a hallmark of Stone's mid-century work — let light into the parking garage and the top two floors while offering privacy and shade from the fierce Texas sun. Arranged around a central core of elevators and a staircase, every residential unit opened to sweeping views of the Capitol grounds and the city beyond.
Its place in the American story
The Westgate Tower marks a turning point that played out in cities all across postwar America: the moment when downtowns began to grow vertical and mixed-use, inviting people to live where they had only worked. As Austin's first residential high-rise, it was a prototype — indeed, it was explicitly intended to serve as a model for other apartment and office towers to come. In that sense it helped write the script for the dense, tall downtown Austin would eventually become.
It is also a significant work of mid-century Modern architecture by one of the most celebrated designers of the age. Edward Durell Stone's decorative solar screens, his handling of light and shade, and his marriage of local materials to a monumental concrete form make the Westgate a textbook example of the era's design ideals, executed at full scale in a state capital.
And because of where it stands, the tower became woven into the life of Texas government. Over the decades it housed state representatives and senators, state employees, political activists, lobbyists, and business leaders — a vertical village of people drawn to be near the seat of power, with the Capitol quite literally at their windows.
If you visit
Stand back and take in the whole tower, then look closely at the details Stone cared about most. The decorative masonry solar screens are the signature to watch for — a patterned skin that shades the building and softens the light, a mid-century Modern flourish that turns a practical response to the Texas sun into something elegant. Notice, too, the individual balconettes tucked between the brick-faced columns and the full-length windows that give the facade its rhythm.
The building's whole reason for being is its relationship to the Capitol next door, so let your eye travel from the tower to the Capitol grounds and back. Every apartment inside was designed to open onto that view; from the street, you can appreciate why a residence here, in the 1960s, felt like living at the very center of Texas civic life.
The Westgate sits right at the west edge of the Capitol grounds in downtown Austin, which makes it an easy and rewarding stop on any walk around the seat of state government. Fold it into a downtown stroll and let it stand as a reminder that Austin's skyline had a first chapter — and that this handsome concrete tower was it.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Edward Durell Stone
- · Julian H. Zimmerman
Themes & tags
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