In the early 1920s a remarkable Arts & Crafts estate began to take shape on the high bluffs overlooking what is now Lady Bird Lake in Austin, Texas. Located above the south shore along Riverside Drive and I-35, it featured a small but very high-style bungalow evocatively named “Norcliff” by its owners, Ollie O. and Calie Norwood. Over the next several years structural additions and improvements to the grounds would eventually yield a beautiful property that was widely admired and well-used by the family and, eventually, large numbers of Austinites.
The story of the Norwood House begins in the years leading up to the Great Depression, when business boomed in America – including Austin. Ollie Norwood made his fortune in the volatile bond market and leveraged his assets to bankroll ambitious, visionary projects. He is best known for building two landmark structures in downtown Austin, the Motoramp Garage and the 16-story Norwood Tower on 7th St. The stunning Gothic-Revival Norwood Tower was the first fully air-conditioned skyscraper in Austin and one of the first such equipped towers in the nation.
Calie Gove Norwood had been a teacher in Matagorda, Texas, before her marriage to Ollie in 1918. The couple’s decision to build a house in the Arts & Crafts style and develop the estate in accordance with the tenets of that movement in design history reflect that they were progressive thinkers, in keeping with the times.
The overall Norwood estate was comprised of Norcliff itself (the main bungalow residence), adjacent formal gardens, vegetable gardens, a garage with apartment, a substantial masonry & wood gazebo with pergola overlooking the Colorado River (known as the “teahouse”), a split-level greenhouse (where vegetables were grown hydroponically) with a gardener’s workroom below-level, a very large geothermal spring-fed swimming pool with fully-plumbed bathhouses, tennis courts, and even two additional bungalow homes for Ollie and Calie’s parents – all on about 5 acres that included a large pecan orchard.
See photos of the Norwood Estate
The real heyday of the Norwood estate didn’t last all that long. The crash of the stock market in 1929 and the Great Depression that followed hit the family hard as it did almost everyone else. The Norwoods were able to hang onto the property into their older years, but many of the special features of the original estate became too much for the couple to maintain, and ultimately faded away over subsequent decades.
Read a detailed history of the Norwood Estate, by Martha Doty Freeman
Some interesting tidbits:
- In later years, the Norwoods opened the swimming pool to the public for an admission fee, and neighborhood youngsters were taught swimming lessons there by Calie Norwood.
- In the flood of 1935, the Norwoods provided drinking water to the city after the south shore’s treatment plant was swamped.
- Many Austinites remember a Sunday tradition of picnicking in the pecan orchard at Norwood when they were kids.
- Others fondly recall the Norwood House as the visual marker for driving away from Austin or getting back in town after a family vacation.
- A more modern generation would head to Norwood after nights at the Vulcan Gas Company or the Armadillo World Headquarters, sneak into the pool, and enjoy a moonlight skinny-dip.
Do you have memories of Norwood? Did it play a role in your life?
Please let us know! We’re collecting stories and we’d love to hear yours.