The Seaholm Power Plant is a historic former

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many p ...

located on the north shore of

Lady Bird Lake Lady Bird Lake (formerly, and still colloquially referred to as Town Lake) is a river-like reservoir on the Colorado River in Austin, Texas, United States. The City of Austin created the reservoir in 1960 as a cooling pond for a new city power p ...

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business distric ...

Austin, Texas Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the county seat, seat and largest city of Travis County, Texas, Travis County, with portions extending into Hays County, Texas, Hays and Williamson County, Texas, Williamson co ...

. Opened in 1951, it is listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

and designated as a

Recorded Texas Historic Landmark Recorded Texas Historic Landmark (RTHL) is a designation awarded by the Texas Historical Commission for historically and architecturally significant properties in the U.S. state of Texas. RTHL is a legal designation and the highest honor the sta ...

. The power plant ceased operation in 1996, and the facility and site were later redeveloped into a

mixed-use Mixed-use is a kind of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning type that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions are to some ...

district.

History

Operating power plant

The Seaholm Power Plant was commissioned in 1948 to meet

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

's growing demand for

electric power Electric power is the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt, one joule per second. Standard prefixes apply to watts as with other SI units: thousands, millions and billions o ...

. The engineering firm

Burns & McDonnell Burns & McDonnell is an American architecture and engineering company based in Kansas City, Missouri, and is owned 100% by its employees. It was established in 1898 by Clinton S. Burns and Robert E. McDonnell, two engineers. In October 2021, it ...

designed the complex, which was constructed in two phases in 1951 and 1955. The facility originally included a turbine generator building, a water intake structure, and an oil heating building. A guard booth and a storage building were added to the site later. Originally called "Power Plant No. 2," on 2 June 1960 the plant was renamed posthumously for Walter E. Seaholm, a prominent figure in the administration of Austin's municipal utilities. Seaholm served as Austin's sole source of electric power from 1950 to 1959, until demand outpaced the 120 megawatts the plant could generate with all five boilers running. As other stations were built the city's reliance on Seaholm waned, and in 1989 the plant stopped providing power to the city, though it was used as a training facility until 1996, when it closed entirely.

Redevelopment

The site lay dormant until 2004, when the

Austin City Council The Austin City Council is the unicameral legislature of the city of Austin, Texas, United States of America. The mayor is included as a member of the council and presides over all council meetings and ceremonies. The current mayor of Austin is ...

requested proposals for redevelopment partners. Several firms and consultancies formed an organization called "Seaholm Power, LLC", which was designated in April 2005 to lead redevelopment of the defunct power plant and the surrounding site. A master development agreement was reached with the city in April 2008 specifying the renovations and new construction that would be undertaken. Work began on the plant's redevelopment in mid-2013. The interior of the turbine generator building was converted to a mixture of office, retail and restaurant space, with tenants occupying the facility beginning in 2015. A residential tower called Seaholm Residences was constructed at the west end of the site, also opening in 2015. , the city has not selected a final plan for the redevelopment of the water intake facility.

Power generation

Seaholm was a semi-outdoor power plant, with its

boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, central h ...

s outdoors but its generators inside the turbine generator building. It ultimately housed five Westinghouse

turbine generator In electricity generation, a generator is a device that converts motive power (mechanical energy) or fuel-based power (chemical energy) into electric power for use in an external circuit. Sources of mechanical energy include steam turbines, gas ...

s; the plant was originally built with two 20-megawatt generators and later expanded with two more 20-megawatt units and then one larger 40-megawatt unit. Seaholm was built with underground

ash Ash or ashes are the solid remnants of fires. Specifically, ''ash'' refers to all non-aqueous, non- gaseous residues that remain after something burns. In analytical chemistry, to analyse the mineral and metal content of chemical samples, ash ...

pits to accommodate

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

-firing, but in fact the plant never ran on coal; the oil heating building and underground fuel tanks also allowed the plant to burn

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

, yet over its operating lifetime it was fired primarily with

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

Architecture

Turbine generator building

The largest building (which formerly housed the turbine generators) stands three stories high and faces southward, toward the lake. The exterior surface of the building is of structural cast-in-place

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...

, punctuated by two south-facing doors and numerous large industrial windows. Metal

Art Moderne Streamline Moderne is an international style of Art Deco architecture and design that emerged in the 1930s. Inspired by aerodynamic design, it emphasized curving forms, long horizontal lines, and sometimes nautical elements. In industrial design ...

-style lettering on glass-block panels above the two entryways reads "City of Austin," and additional letters atop the awnings over the entryways read "Light" (above the west door) and "Power" (above the east door). The west facade carries additional metal lettering reading "City of Austin Power Plant." The north facade of the building is dominated by the five external boilers and their tall smokestacks. The building's interior is divided into four levels centered on the vast two-story turbine room.

Water intake structure

The water intake structure sits on the shore of

directly south of the turbine generator building. The structure shares many design and architectural elements with the generator building, with exposed structural concrete walls and large industrial windows opening into a vast interior space. The south face of the building rises two stories above the lake, with ten

sluice gate Sluice ( ) is a word for a channel controlled at its head by a movable gate which is called a sluice gate. A sluice gate is traditionally a wood or metal barrier sliding in grooves that are set in the sides of the waterway and can be considered ...

s through which cooling water for the plant's steam condensers was taken in. This water was pumped to the generator building through massive underground pipes; after being used as coolant the water was discharged into nearby Shoal Creek.

References

External links

Seaholm Power, LLC
{{National Register of Historic Places in Austin, Texas City of Austin Historic Landmarks National Register of Historic Places in Austin, Texas Industrial buildings and structures on the National Register of Historic Places in Texas Energy infrastructure on the National Register of Historic Places Energy infrastructure completed in 1951 1951 establishments in Texas Mixed-use developments