Curving streets and deep front porches surround you here, laid out in 1891 as Austin's first planned suburb north of the university. Monroe Martin Shipe was a Kansas City developer who purchased 200 acres north of the University of Texas in 1891 and laid out a streetcar suburb with curving streets, large lots, and a trolley line connecting residents to downtown. He named it Hyde Park, after London's famous green space, and sold it to Austin's emerging professional class — lawyers, doctors, professors — who built the craftsman bungalows, Queen Anne cottages, and Foursquare houses that still define the neighborhood today.
Hyde Park was Austin's first neighborhood north of the university, part of the gradual expansion of the city into the limestone plateau. The streetcar line that made it viable was eventually abandoned, but the neighborhood's walkability survived. Hyde Park Bar and Grill, with its famous ten-foot fork sculpture and reliably excellent onion rings, has anchored the neighborhood's social life for decades.
The neighborhood has fought pitched battles over historic preservation — opposing demolition, fighting incompatible infill development, demanding that the bungalows survive. Mostly they have. Hyde Park remains what it was built to be: a quiet, tree-shaded place for people who take their neighborhood seriously.