Rusticated limestone and arched windows rise in front of you, marking one of the most storied buildings in Texas: the Driskill Hotel. Jesse Lincoln Driskill was a cattle baron who made a fortune driving longhorns up the Chisholm Trail, and in 1886 he invested that fortune in a monument to his own success. The Romanesque Revival building — all rusticated limestone, arched windows, and ornate stonework — announced that Austin had arrived as a city worthy of genuine luxury.
Driskill himself lost the hotel to debt within two years, a cautionary tale about frontier fortunes, but the building endured. Lyndon Johnson sat in the Driskill bar watching election returns on November 3, 1964, as the votes came in confirming his landslide presidential victory. More tenderly, LBJ had proposed to Lady Bird in this building decades earlier, during their whirlwind 1934 courtship.
The hotel is famously haunted — guests report a little girl bouncing a ball in the hallways, and a bride who took her own life after being jilted now allegedly wanders the upper floors. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the Driskill carries enough genuine history to make your skin prickle.