Historic Homes & Buildings
Old Town Bastrop features more than 130 places where history buffs can get their fix. Culturally significant churches, historic homes and civic and commercial structures have all retained their place in the city and its history. Styles ranging from double log houses to Greek Revival, Victorian, Prairie and Classical Revival all tell the history of the region in architecture and can still be seen today.
Learn more about these historic sites in Bastrop.
THE COLORADO RIVER BRIDGE (“OLD IRON BRIDGE”)
Bastrop’s iron truss bridge, originally erected in 1923, is now a pedestrian walkway listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the spot to join the quirky International Society of Bridge Spitters.
BASTROP OPERA HOUSE
The 1889 Bastrop Opera House is home to local and touring theatre productions, as well as live music.
KERR COMMUNITY CENTER (KERR HALL)
Kerr Community Center has continuously served Bastrop’s African-American community since 1914 as a gathering place during times of racial segregation in the United States, and as a USO post for African-American soldiers stationed at nearby Camp Swift. It’s also served as a place for entertainment, hosting significant black musicians, including blues pianist Roosevelt “Grey Ghost” Williams, and is still a community gathering place today.
BASTROP COUNTY COURTHOUSE
Bastrop’s unique courthouse was built in 1884 using 1.3 million bricks, Austin cut stone and lumber from the Lost Pines forest. It is a three-story, stuccoed brick, Neoclassical Revival structure with a copper-domed clock tower in the center of a flat roof. Although the Courthouse has been altered substantially from its original fine Neoclassical form, the structure is historically significant to the state for representing the governmental organization of one of the first Anglo-American settlements in Texas.
OLD BASTROP COUNTY JAIL
Immediately adjacent to and west of the courthouse, stands the distinctive Victorian-styled Old Bastrop County Jail built in 1892. It is a three-story tan- and red-brick building that is not only historically important, but also architecturally significant in its style and function. During the era of romanticism in which it was built, the designers made no effort to symbolically represent the function of the building, instead creating it to be visually interesting with contrasting bricks and stilted arches, which is still essentially the same today as it was when it was built.
FIRST NATIONAL BANK
Built in 1889, the First National Bank of Bastrop played an important role in Bastrop’s civic development as its main financial hub. In 2014, it celebrated 125 years in its original location.
Learn more about our historic homes and buildings at the Bastrop Museum and Visitor's Center
View addresses and descriptions of Bastrop’s historic churches here.