The spring water at Deep Eddy still runs 68 to 70 degrees, the way it has since A.J. Eilers poured the concrete in 1915. Muny still sits on its 141 acres along Enfield Road, the way it has since 1924. What has shifted, quietly, is the schedule around them.
If you have lived here more than a few summers, you already know the rhythm. This year the rhythm has three new footnotes, and they all sit within a mile of one another.
The Pool's New Tuesday
The most practical change first. As of this spring, Deep Eddy Pool is closed every Tuesday for cleaning and maintenance, a schedule the Parks and Recreation Department put in place beginning April 21, 2026. That is new. For years the pool operated on a rolling maintenance rhythm without a fixed weekday closure, and a Tuesday morning swim was one of the least-crowded windows in the week.
The season end is also fixed on the calendar this year. Deep Eddy Pool is open weekly until Oct. 31, 2026, which gives you roughly three more months of warm-weather afternoons before the lap pool becomes the winter-only proposition it has always been.
A few operational specifics worth keeping in mind:
- Water source. Spring water is continuously circulated into the pool through multiple underground wells. The water that's discharged is routed back to Lady Bird Lake. No chlorine, which is why the lap pool draws the crowd it does.
- Scale. A spring-fed swimming hole with water that maintains a year-round temperature of 68 to 70 degrees. It includes a 10-lane, 100-foot-long lap pool and a 1-acre wading pool.
- Recent repairs. Deep Eddy Pool, 401 Deep Eddy Ave., will be closed Monday, June 22, through Sunday, June 28, for repairs to a fill inlet valve that broke earlier this year. That closure has come and gone, but it explains the fill-time inconsistencies some regulars noticed in early summer.
- Winter access. Affordable entry fees apply during warmer months and admission is free for intrepid lap swimmers throughout the late Fall and Winter.
The nearby food-and-drink loop has not really changed. Food and drink options are available nearby on Lake Austin Boulevard, including Deep Eddy Cabaret, which was recently featured in the Statesman's list of Austin's best dive bars, and Pool Burger. The Cabaret has been at 2315 Lake Austin Boulevard since 1951, which puts it within a few years of the pool's WPA-era bathhouse and roughly the same vintage as everything else on this stretch. That is part of what makes the block feel unusually intact.
Muny After the Centennial
Walk south from the pool and you are on the edge of Lions Municipal Golf Course. Muny turned 100 in October 2024, and the celebration was substantial, but the more consequential development for anyone who lives near Exposition or Enfield is what has happened since.
The land ownership question is unresolved, but the preservation apparatus has hardened. The Save Historic Muny District Board is an entity chartered by the state legislature to connect the City of Austin with the University of Texas on the issue of MUNY's preservation. The Muny Conservancy continues to fundraise for a restoration led by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, both of whom have volunteered their work.
The scale of what the course actually absorbs is easy to overlook. Muny does over 70,000 rounds a year, and it is not primarily an adult-recreation number. The course's 8th hole runs along Exposition Boulevard, just across from O. Henry Middle School. MUNY is home to O. Henry's golf team as well as more than a dozen local school teams.
Austinites have referred to Muny as "the lungs of West Austin."
That framing, which Golf.com attributed to residents watching urban expansion move through surrounding sections of Tarrytown, is worth taking literally when you are trying to figure out why the neighborhood feels the way it does at 7 p.m. in July. The 141 acres are not decorative. They are why the light behaves differently on the west side of Exposition than it does two blocks east.
For anyone new enough to still be sorting out what makes the course historically distinct: in late 1950, following the Supreme Court's decision in Sweatt v. Painter but well before Brown v Board of Education, Muny quietly became the first desegregated public golf course in the southern United States. That is the fact that anchors the National Register listing and the state-level preservation district.
If you want to actually play the course this summer, the operational quirks are worth knowing. Closed for Maintenance: Closed every 3rd Monday of the month excluding holidays and major golf tournaments. The City of Austin's Muny page also lists the aerifying dates. And the July calendar still belongs to the Firecracker Open, Texas' oldest amateur tournament, which has run at Muny since the 1940s.
The West Lynn Corner Is Moving
The third shift is the one that will change what your walk to coffee looks like over the next several years. The corner of West 12th and West Lynn, where Nau's Enfield Drug operated from 1951 to 2022, is finally moving from "closed" to "under construction planning."
The property assembly is more comprehensive than most people realized. The property was sold to local real estate outfit Zydeco Development Corporation, which also scooped up a number of neighboring properties on West Lynn Street. Now, Zydeco has big plans for the little Clarksville block, where it plans to construct a five-story development complete with 27 residences, ground-floor retail and underground parking.
What the developer has committed to preserving matters, because Nau's had one of the most photographed facades in West Austin. The project design team at Miro Rivera Architects agreed to preserve a number of key streetscape features, including the Nau's building's canopied facade, a mural done by the late Daniel Johnston and a century-old house that's home to Cafe Medici.
The historic preservation review has not been frictionless. Commissioners voted to postpone construction permits one more month, with hopes of ironing out a compromise at the next meeting of the Architectural Review Committee. "We would like to see more of a stepped setback, so that when you're on the sidewalk, your sightline sees more sky than building," said Commissioner Kevin Koch, who made the motion to postpone. That is the level of scrutiny this specific block draws.
Timeline wise, do not expect scaffolding tomorrow. According to the developers, construction isn't expected to start here for at least two years, since they say they really want to take their time discussing the project with the neighborhood and the city to iron out all the details.
In the meantime, the block is still functional. Fresh Plus Grocery continues to run at 1221 West Lynn, one of the last independent grocers in central Austin, and Cafe Medici remains in the converted house on the parcel. If you have not walked the block recently and mentally mapped what is staying versus what is coming down, this is the summer to do it.
A Weekend That Uses All Three
The reason to put these three things in the same post is that they are not really three separate stories. They are the same story about a neighborhood whose most enduring institutions are, in 2026, all in some form of active negotiation with time.
A Saturday that uses the whole geography looks like this. Morning lap swim at Deep Eddy, skipping Tuesday. Late breakfast or a Loyal Forever burger at Pool Burger. An afternoon nine at Muny if you play, or a walk along the 8th hole fence line on Exposition if you don't. A stop at Fresh Plus for whatever the evening needs. A drink at the Cabaret when it cools off, which in August happens around the same time the light finally leaves the pecans over Eilers Park.
The specific pleasure of living here right now is that all of this is still possible in a single afternoon on foot or by short drive. That will remain true after the West Lynn project breaks ground, after whatever gets resolved at Muny gets resolved, and after Deep Eddy's Tuesday schedule stops feeling novel. It is worth using this particular summer, on this particular schedule, deliberately.
If you own a home in Tarrytown or along Deep Eddy and are thinking about what the next chapter looks like for your property, or you are considering the neighborhood from farther afield, Susan Barringer brings a working knowledge of West Austin's blocks, buyers, and institutions to every conversation. Work With Susan when the timing is right.
