Arnold Bakery

The 1906 Arnold Bakery Building was built for Richard Arnold, who established a bakery on this site in 1892.

The commercial building, which served as a bakehouse, is inextricably linked with the social and ethnic ebb
and flow of the central east Austin neighborhood known as Robertson Hill. The community evolution from mixed races and economic levels to one of African-American segregation offers important documentation of life in Austin and the South. The Arnold family remained in the neighborhood as merchants and residents for over fifty years of this transition period.

The period of significance, 1906-1953, includes 47 years of the building's history as a family bakery and covers
time spent as a restaurant and bar for African Americans. Established by a family of German immigrants, the bakery provided sustenance and sweets to all, regardless of the changing times and colors, thereby complementing and supporting the daily lives of the people who lived and worked in the surrounding
neighborhood. The site's history of use and ownership over the past century reflects the changes in the community's economic and social status and the city's racial attitudes. As the area prepares to undergo yet
another change through a planned revitalization, the Arnold Bakery Building will once again anchor the
community's commercial core. The Arnold Bakery is nominated for listing in the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion A in the area of Commerce at the local level of significance.

Founding and History of Central East Austin

East Eleventh Street has long served the Central East Austin community as a commercial corridor. The area has been ethnically diverse since the 1870s when the surrounding neighborhood began drawing European immigrants as well as slaves freed after the Civil War.

The George L. Robertson Subdivision, known as Robertson Hill, was carved out of the front yard of East Austin's 1841 French Legation. It is named for the eldest son of Dr. Joseph William Robertson (1809-1870)— a former ranger, early Austin physician, and 1843-44 mayor of Austin—and his second wife, Lydia Lee,'" Dr. Robertson brought his family to Austin in 1840 and established an apothecary shop on Congress Avenue. In 1848 he paid $2000 for the French Legation, the former home of French Ambassador de Saligny, and lived there until his death. The hill itself thus became associated with Robertson's name.

At a sheriff's sale during the 1850s, Dr. Robertson purchased several parcels of the heavily wooded area one mile east of the Capitol. When Robertson learned in 1869 that he was dying of consumption, he subdivided this land and sold the first lot. Lot #6 on Mesquite Street, to Malick Wilson, a Freedman, for $100. The western expansion of Arnold Bakery lies on the eastern portion of Lot #6.

Purchases of Robertson's lots increased
between 1870 and 1874 with the arrival of rail in Austin in December of 1871, linking east Austin to west Austin via the east/west running Houston & Texas Central Railroad, then on Sixth Street. A bridge across Waller Creek connecting east Austin to the downtown business district was also completed in 1871. Mesquite Street (East Eleventh) was the southern boundary of the Robertson Subdivision of Outlot 55, Division B.

Other land in the area was owned by Irish, Swedish, French, and German immigrants, freed slaves (35% of the
Austin's population was African-American in the late 1860s), Anglo-Americans, and various investors. The suburban community began as a racially, ethnically, and economically mixed population, but East Austin became divided along color lines as East Austin businesses and institutions served an increasing number of African-American and Hispanic residents after 1900. By 1910 the Robertson Hill neighborhood consisted almost entirely of African-American residents. Over the years the African-American and Hispanic populations increased, and in 1928 the city adopted a master plan to segregate Blacks by limiting municipal services and schools for African-Americans to east Austin. By the 1940s and 50s, Eleventh and Twelfth Streets became the commercial centers of African-American life, with more than 50 African-American businesses that included the Deluxe Hotel, Harlem Cab Company, grocery stores, restaurants and clubs, the Harlem Theater, barber and beauty shops, and two business schools. In the early 1950s, the construction of the north-south Interstate Highway 35 sealed the fate of east Austin by dividing it physically from the rest of the city. Beginning in the 1960s, after Civil Rights legislation requiring desegregation, the neighborhood fell into a long decline.

Today's east Austin is composed primarily of African-American and Mexican-American cultural groups. Many
landmarks burned down or have been demolished, and many of the vacant lots are now owned by the city. The Texas Department of Transportation's plans to lower IH-35 between the Colorado River and 38th Street, thereby reconnecting east Austin to west Austin, will undoubtedly have a dramatic effect on the future of East Eleventh Street and the residents of Robertson Hill.