Qualla: Driskill Hotel

Driskill Hotel: Introduction

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit LoneStarMike, CC BY-SA 3.0. Colonel Jesse Driskill made his money in cattle, and he spent it the way cattlemen do -- big. In 1886, he opened a hotel on the corner of Sixth and Brazos streets in Austin, Texas, constructed from over six million pressed bricks and trimmed in white limestone, with Richardsonian arches so massive they were reputed to be the largest in Texas. Three limestone busts stare down from the facade: Driskill and his two sons, Bud and Tobe, their stone faces keeping permanent watch over a building their patriarch intended as nothing less than the finest hotel south of St. Louis. He went broke within a year of opening it. But the Driskill survived him, and survived everything else Austin has thrown at it in the nearly fourteen decades since.

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Image: LoneStarMike | CC BY-SA 3.0

Driskill Hotel: Six Million Bricks and a Cattleman's Pride

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aleksandr Zykov from Russia, CC BY-SA 2.0. Local architects J. N. Preston & Son designed the original four-story Romanesque Revival building, which opened with a grand celebration on December 20, 1886, featured in a special edition of the Austin Daily Statesman. The second floor held the main dining room and ballroom, sep...

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Image: Aleksandr Zykov from Russia | CC BY-SA 2.0

Driskill Hotel: Where LBJ Fell in Love and Won Elections

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Neff Conner, CC BY 2.0. The Driskill is inseparable from the political life of Texas, but no figure haunts its halls quite like Lyndon Baines Johnson. In 1934, the future president met Claudia Taylor -- the woman the world would know as Lady Bird -- for their first date in the Driskill dining room. The ...

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Image: Neff Conner | CC BY 2.0

Driskill Hotel: Death Sentences and Reprieves

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0. The Driskill has nearly died more than once. By the early 1970s, the building had deteriorated so badly that the Austin American-Statesman ran an article declaring the hotel's fate sealed. A nonprofit called the Driskill Hotel Corporation raised $900,000 to save it from the wreck...

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Image: ajay_suresh | CC BY 4.0

Driskill Hotel: Ghosts, Movie Stars, and SXSW

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Billy Hathorn assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY 3.0. The Driskill wears its age with a certain atmospheric weight. Guests and staff have long reported unexplained encounters, including the story of a seven-year-old girl named Samantha, said to have died after falling down the Grand Staircase while chasing a ball. The hotel has been...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Billy Hathorn assumed (based on copyright claims). | CC BY 3.0