Tax Credit Program Highlight: Tucker-Winfield Apartments

History

The Tucker-Winfield Apartment building reflects Austin’s changing urban center of the 1930s, when the University of Texas’ and state agencies’ expansion drove the need for more affordable housing to accommodate employees and students. The building’s eclectic blend of Period revival-style elements (Colonial, Tudor, and Italian Renaissance revivals) are reflected in the façade. The apartment building sits on the edge of Austin’s central business district a few blocks from the capitol complex on Nueces Street, in a once-residential neighborhood of early- to mid-century dwellings that have been converted to commercial use. The Tucker-Winfield Apartment building stands as an excellent, now rare, example of multi-family housing units that dominated downtown Austin in the 1920s and 1930s.

Rehabilitation Project

This project provided for a much-needed rehabilitation of the Tucker-Winfield Apartment building. The exterior work included, but was not limited to, mortar repointing, masonry repair and cleaning, window repainting, reglazing and weatherstripping, repair and in-kind replacement of the historic awnings, and replacement of the non-historic exterior metal fire stair. The interior scope involved preservation of the carpentry trim, repainting, replacement of the gypsum board drywall to achieve a 1-hour fire rated separation between the corridors, stairwell, and apartment units, restoration of the original wood floors along with the historic bathroom floor tile and tile wainscot, and installation of a new HVAC system as well as updates to the electrical and plumbing systems.