Commodore Perry Estate, Auberge Resorts Collection

A Cotton Fortune's Italian Folly

Edgar Perry made his money shipping Texas cotton to Europe, and in 1928 he spent some of it building a 10,000-square-foot Italian Renaissance Revival mansion for his wife, Lutie, on a walled estate along Waller Creek. Friends called him "the Commodore," a nickname with no naval basis. The house passed through decades as a school campus before developers The Marchbanks Company and Clark Lyda Interests brought in designer Ken Fulk to reimagine it, and architecture firm Moule and Polyzoides to add a new three-story Inn alongside it. Auberge Resorts Collection opened the result as a hotel in July 2020, fox motifs, English gardens, and all, after years of the property sitting closed to the public entirely.

Why It Works

A National Register mansion turned into a generic luxury hotel is a familiar, deflating story in preservation circles. Commodore Perry Estate avoids it by keeping the original rooms genuinely small in number, just five inside the historic house itself, and building the bulk of its 54 rooms and suites into the new Inn instead of carving up the mansion's grand spaces. That restraint, plus a design brief specific enough to reference the Perry family's own history rather than a generic notion of Texas luxury, is what separates this property from a chain hotel borrowing a historic facade for its lobby photos.

Why This Location

The estate sits in Central Austin near Hyde Park, across Red River Street from the 121-year-old Hancock Golf Course and tucked against Waller Creek, close enough to downtown for a short drive but walled and gated enough to feel like its own small world. It is a residential, tree-lined part of the city rather than a hotel district, which is precisely the point: guests come here for the ten acres inside the wall, not for what is immediately outside it, and the quiet is as much a part of the experience as any single amenity.

Fast Facts

• Gamme: Ultra-luxury, Auberge Resorts Collection

• Vibe: Restored 1928 Italian Renaissance mansion with English gardens

• Chambres: 54 rooms and suites across the historic mansion and the newer Inn

• Best For: Milestone stays, weddings, travelers who want a private-estate feel

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: The organic urban farm supplying the kitchens on-site

• Dining: Lutie's, open to the public, and the guests-only Mansion restaurant from Uchi and Barley Swine alumni

• Amenities: Outdoor pool, English gardens, member's club, chapel for private events

• Attractions: Hancock Golf Course across the street, Hyde Park, downtown Austin a short drive away

Lutie's and the Mansion Table

The estate runs two distinct dining rooms under one roof. Lutie's, named for Edgar Perry's wife, sits at the front of the property on Red River Street and is open to the public for lunch, dinner, and brunch. The Mansion restaurant, tucked inside the historic house itself, is reserved for hotel guests and members, and its kitchen is led by Bradley Nicholson and Susana Querejazu, a husband-and-wife chef team who came up through Uchi, Odd Duck, and Barley Swine, three of Austin's most-watched restaurant kitchens over the past decade. The split lets the hotel serve the neighborhood without opening the mansion's most private rooms to anyone who walks in off the street.

Gardens, Pool, and the Working Farm

Ten walled acres give Commodore Perry Estate room most hotels in this city simply do not have: an English-style garden planted with rows of antique roses, an organic urban farm that supplies produce to the kitchens, and lawns substantial enough to host University of Texas football watch parties on game days. An oversized outdoor pool anchors the south side of the property, with a veranda looking back over the grounds and the old oak trees that predate the hotel by decades. It amounts to a private park inside the city, which is about as rare an amenity as a downtown-adjacent hotel can offer anywhere in Texas.