Live in Clarksville

Clarksville began in 1871, when Charles Clark, a freedman, bought two acres west of Austin from Nathan Shelley, a former Confederate general, and sold lots to other freedmen. By 1882 residents had bought land for a church for $50, and Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church, in its 1935 building at 1725 West 11th Street, is still the center of the community. This guide covers the City's Old West Austin planning area, which is larger than Clarksville: MoPac to North Lamar Boulevard, Enfield Road to Lady Bird Lake, about 0.92 square miles and 4,754 residents at the 2020 census. The Clarksville National Register district is a small part of it, northeast of where the railroad beside MoPac crosses West 10th Street: five census blocks and 380 residents in 2020. Around it are the West Line and Old West Austin Register districts, with houses from the 1870s.

What happened to the town is on the record. In 1928 the City's plan proposed a "negro district" east of East Avenue. Clarksville stayed, and the Clarksville Community Development Corporation records that the City withheld the paved streets, sidewalks, street lights, sewers and flood control it gave the white neighborhoods around it; permanent paving was paid for in 1976 from a $100,000 federal grant. MoPac was built along the western edge over residents' protests, and the sources count its cost differently: the Texas State Historical Association says 26 families were relocated and 23 more left, Wikipedia says 33 families, and the CCDC about a third of the houses. Homes fell from 162 in 1970 to fewer than 100 in 1976. That year residents defeated a thoroughfare through the middle of the community, and in 1978 they founded the CCDC.

The census and the parcel roll measure the change. The CCDC says gentrification has displaced most of Clarksville's Black families and that many old houses have been demolished. The 2020 census counted 101 residents who identified as Black alone among the planning area's 4,754, and 23 among the Register district's 380. The appraisal district dates the median house on the district's 100 single-family parcels to 1971, and only 27 to before 1941, where across the planning area 436 of 695 are that old. The CCDC keeps 11 properties, houses, duplexes and an accessory unit, rented to 17 households earning no more than 60% of the area's median family income, and opens the Haskell House, built between 1879 and 1887, as a free museum on the second and fourth Sundays.

Only some blocks are under local rules. Austin has eight local historic districts, and three are here: Harthan Street (2008), Castle Hill (2010) and Smoot/Terrace Park (2018), 17.5 acres between 6th and 9th Streets that news coverage placed in Clarksville and that passed despite a petition from opponents. None of them is the Clarksville Register district. Inside a local district, exterior changes to a contributing house need approval from the Historic Preservation Office or the Historic Landmark Commission, and all new ground-up building goes to the Commission, which meets monthly. That covers the extra homes the City's HOME amendments allow on a single-family lot. The City's review page also lists contributing buildings in a National Register district for review of exterior work and new construction, without saying whether that review can refuse a permit, so ask the Historic Preservation Office about the exact address before you offer.

The price is the land. The appraisal district's parcel layer values the land above the house on most of the planning area's 696 single-family parcels, on lots of about 0.15 acres, but it states no appraisal year, so this guide quotes none of its values. The Census Bureau's survey puts the median owner-occupied value in tract 12, which holds three-quarters of the residents, at $1,303,800, give or take $146,172, and Zillow's typical value for its Old West Austin neighborhood, condominiums included, was $898,147 in August 2026, higher than a year earlier. On the 2025 rates a homestead at Zillow's value owes the five taxing units about $15,247 a year, and the same house without the exemption about $18,380. In 2020, 68% of the occupied homes were rented. The City's floodplain covers about 14% of the land, almost all of it south of West 10th Street, and none of the Register district. The citywide arithmetic is on the Austin page.