Luxury Hotels Atlas / Places / United States / Austin / The Driskill Hotel
The Driskill Hotel
Austin, Texas, United States · Unbound Collection · Core Luxury
LBJ brought Lady Bird on their first date to the Driskill in 1934 and watched the returns of the 1964 presidential election roll in from what is now the Jim Hogg Parlor. The Driskill Hotel is the oldest operating hotel in Austin and one of the defining architectural landmarks of Texas. The Driskill commands the corner of Sixth Street and Brazos Street at 604 Brazos, the anchor of downtown Austin since its grand opening on December 20, 1886.
- 189 rooms
- Opened 1886
- Neighborhood: Downtown
- Architect: Jasper N. Preston & Sons (1886); Trost & Trost
About The Driskill Hotel
- Cattle baron Colonel Jesse Lincoln Driskill built the hotel in 1886 with over six million pressed bricks, its construction rising alongside the Texas State Capitol at the same time.
- Architect Jasper N. Preston designed Romanesque arches reputed to be the largest in Texas, with limestone busts of Driskill and his two sons embedded in the facade.
- LBJ and Lady Bird Johnson had their first date here in 1934, and LBJ later held election-night watch parties in the hotel in 1948 and 1964.
- Louis Armstrong performed here in October 1931.
- It is Austin's oldest operating hotel and has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since November 25, 1969.
History
The Driskill Hotel is the oldest operating hotel in Austin and one of the defining architectural landmarks of Texas. It was built by Colonel Jesse Lincoln Driskill, a cattle baron from Missouri who had made a fortune driving longhorns north to the railheads and who resolved in 1884 to build the finest hotel south of St. Louis on the half-block bounded by Sixth, Seventh, and Brazos Streets in downtown Austin. Driskill purchased the lot for $7,500 and hired local architect Jasper N. Preston and Son to design the building. Preston created a Richardsonian Romanesque Revival masterpiece in over six million pressed bricks and white limestone, its two-story porches featuring large Romanesque arches reputed to be the largest in Texas, with limestone busts of Driskill and his two sons embedded in the facade. The building went up at the same time as the Texas State Capitol, rising on Sixth Street while the Capitol dome rose on Congress Avenue, the two construction projects defining Austin's ambitions during the same years.
The hotel opened on December 20, 1886, to a reception the Daily Statesman called "one of the finest hotels in the whole country." The sixty steam-heated guest rooms, four elaborate suites, and a four-story open rotunda topped by a domed skylight, designed as a passive cooling system that pulled breezes through the building, made it an immediate marvel of hospitality engineering as well as architecture. The skylit dining room was the most elegant restaurant in Austin for years, and the hotel's corridors were widened specifically to accommodate the fashionable skirts of the era.
Driskill's cattle empire collapsed in an 1887 drought that devastated Texas herds, forcing him to sell the hotel within a year of its opening. The property passed through a series of owners over the following decades, among them Major George Littlefield, a cattle baron and banker who invested $60,000 in renovations including electric lighting, steam heating, and ceiling frescoes, and who vowed the hotel would never close again. His prediction proved nearly true. In 1923, the large guest rooms were subdivided into 125 smaller ones, and in 1930 a thirteen-story annex designed by the El Paso firm Trost and Trost was added to the north, housing a barbershop with Turkish baths and, in the former Men's Parlor, the Maximilian Room, named for eight gold leaf-framed mirrors once belonging to Emperor Maximilian of Mexico and his wife Empress Carlota, installed at this time.
The hotel's social and political significance tracks the entire arc of Texas history. LBJ brought Lady Bird on their first date to the Driskill in 1934 and watched the returns of the 1964 presidential election roll in from what is now the Jim Hogg Parlor. Louis Armstrong played a three-night run there in 1931. The hotel has hosted every inaugural ball for Texas governors from Sul Ross onward, and served as the nerve center for journalists and political operatives during the Johnson administration.
By 1969 the Driskill was threatened with demolition in favor of a glass-facade tower, a plan that collapsed and left the hotel vacant. A community preservation campaign raised more than $700,000 and Braniff International Hotels purchased and restored it, reopening in January 1973. Great American Life Insurance undertook a $30 million, four-year restoration in the 1990s that returned the building to its original grandeur, and the hotel reopened in a Millennium celebration on December 31, 1999. Hyatt Hotels Corporation acquired the Driskill in 2013 for $85 million, and in 2025 Pixiu Investments, Woodbine Development, and Hyatt began a full-scale restoration timed to the hotel's 140th anniversary in December 2026, a renovation that, for the 189-room landmark, will be as consequential as any of the transformations that preceded it.
The setting
The Driskill holds the corner of Sixth and Brazos at 604 Brazos, downtown Austin since 20 December 1886. Cattle baron Jesse Driskill built it in Richardsonian Romanesque, more than six million pressed bricks and white limestone. The Capitol rose in the same years. Sixth Street is the night; this is the hotel that outlasted it.
Restaurants and bars
- The Driskill Bar — Bar · Bar
Amenities
- Fitness center
- Pet-friendly
Awards
- AAA Four Diamond (2026)
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