Bluebonnet Tourist Camp - Austin, TX - U.S. National Register of Historic Places on Waymarking.com

Arranged around an open courtyard, the tourist camp is comprised of two detached buildings. Each contains a series of small 1-room units separated by covered spaces in which to park automobiles.

Of frame construction, the buildings are generally rectangular in plan and are surmounted by low-pitched, front-gabled roofs. The primary (west) facades face Guadalupe Street and are fronted with petrified rock, a popular local building trend in the late 1920s and 1930s. Walls on the courtyard side are sheathed in 117/121 wood siding, while those exterior walls are clad in asbestos siding that is nearly obscured by vegetation and new construction on adjacent lots. Each "camp" includes a single room marked by a single door and paired double-hung wood sash with 4/4 lights.

A unique example of its property type in Hyde Park, the Bluebonnet Tourist Camp was constructed during the period of greatest building activity in Hyde Park. Built on the primary route to cities north of Austin, the tourist camp developed to serve increasing number of tourists who came to Central Texas to take advantage of recreational opportunities afforded by the lakes being dammed by Depression-era public works projects.

Although numerous courts and campgrounds were constructed in Austin during the 1930s, the Bluebonnet Tourist Camp remains the only example surviving in Austin of such facilities built before 1930. Renamed the Blue Bonnet Court about 1939, it was a neighborhood institution owned and occupied by Hyde Park residents for nearly three decades following its completion. Although it has suffered from deterioration since conversion to apartments, the tourist camp retains a high degree of its historic integrity . It is therefore nominated for its local architectural significance under Criterion C.