Mueller Airport

Mueller Airport. . In 1928, Austin voters approved bonds to build the city's first municipal airport. The city council purchased 340 acres northeast of the central business district and named the facility Robert Mueller airport in honor of a city commissioner who had died in office. The airport opened in October 1930 with a single runway, small terminal building and single hangar. , Commercial air service began in 1936, and the facility expanded rapidly through the 1940s and 1950s. Additional runways and taxiways, a new terminal building and rows of hangars, including a 1943 wooden bow-trussed facility for Browning Aerial Services, were developed on 711 total acres. A new "jet age" terminal facility was designed in 1959 by Austin architects Fehr and Granger, associate architect Herbert Crume, structural engineer W. Clark Craig and consulting engineer Herman Blum, and built by general contractor B.L. McGee. The reinforced concrete frame was accented with sleek modern materials of steel glass and aluminum, with curved diamond-shaped trusses. The distinctive 89-foot-high control tower was clad in alternating light and dark blue porcelain panels, curving outward from 18 feet wide at the base to nearly 30 feet wide at the ninth floor, which was topped by a roof deck and railing. Progressive Architecture magazine gave a design award and a feature article to the newest symbol of Austin's growth. U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Mayor Lester Palmer attended and spoke at the dedication in May 1961. , After nearby Bergstrom Air Force Base was decommissioned in 1993, Austin's airport facilities moved there in 1999. Most of the aviation facilities here were demolished, including all of the 1961 passenger terminal except the control tower. Redevelopment then began on a mixed-use community known as Mueller and based on new urbanist principles.