Waller Plan

It was commissioned in 1839 by the government of the Republic of Texas and developed by Edwin Waller, a Texian revolutionary and politician who would later become Austin's first mayor.

Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar instructed the committee to consider a site along the north bank of the Colorado River that he had visited the previous year.

[5] The central street of the city, Congress Avenue, ran northward from the bank of the river along a natural valley to the Capitol Square hilltop.

[10] The plan also designated spaces for a hospital, an academy and university, churches, a courthouse and jail, an armory, and a penitentiary.

[5] With the surveying and grid plan completed, Waller and his associates drew up a plat dividing the city blocks into land lots.

It wasn't until the 1870s, with the arrival of the Houston and Texas Central Railway and the economic boom of the post-war Reconstruction era, that Austin expanded significantly beyond the bounds of the 1839 Waller Plan.

[13]: 4  It also noted the good condition of the three surviving park squares from the Waller Plan and their value to the city as "beauty spots and breathing spaces".

Street map of the 1839 Austin City Plan
A map of the grid plan for the streets of Austin from the 1839 City Plan
Street map of the 1682 Philadelphia city plan
A map of the 1682 Thomas Holme plan for central Philadelphia , thought to have inspired the Waller Plan
Aerial map of Downtown Austin in 1873
An aerial lithograph map of Austin in 1873, showing the persistence of the Waller Plan street grid