KUT Radio, Austin's NPR Station
Why are so many places in Austin named Violet Crown?
By Juan Garcia
April 10, 2025 at 10:09 AM CDT
This story was originally performed at KUT's ATXplained Live at Paramount Theatre on Oct. 11, 2023. Get tickets for our next show!
As Jenna Guzman was biking around North Austin, she started to notice a familiar theme. Many businesses had "violet crown" in their names.
“There is the violet crown coffee shop, there's a church named after the violet crown, there's the shopping center,” she said.
The list doesn't end there. There's also a Violet Crown Tattoo, the Violet Crown Trail, the Violet Crown Cinema and more. That led Guzman to ask ATXplained: "What is the significance and origin of the violet crown motif throughout Austin?"
KUT producer Juan Garcia receives a tattoo at Violet Crown Tattoo in East Austin. Michael Minasi / KUT (3000x2000, AR: 1.5)
Unlike other nicknames for Austin, there didn’t seem to be an obvious reason for the moniker. “The Capital City” means the Texas capitol is in Austin. “Live Music Capital of the World” was a tourism thing.
Some of the earliest references to a violet crown date back to the 1890s. Writers of the era, including O. Henry and William Cowper Brann, described Austin’s sky as a violet crown. They were referring to the pretty purple hue the sky sometimes turns at sunset.
A nickname-worthy sunset
KXAN’s former chief meteorologist David Yeomans said the sky appears purple for the same reason the sky looks blue during the day. It has to do with the amount of atmosphere the light has to pass through and what particles the light hits before it reaches our eyes.
“If you think of the Earth as a round sphere covered by a thin layer of atmosphere, sunlight coming in to hit the Earth's surface and to hit our atmosphere is actually white,” Yeomans said.
The light from the sun goes through a filtering process as it passes the atmosphere. The light particles bounce off all kinds of microscopic stuff on its journey to our eyeballs.
KUT Reporter Audrey McGlinchy captured an example of Austin's violet crown sunset. (3024x4032, AR: 0.75)
As the sun dips behind the Earth at sunset, the light now has to pass through much more atmosphere due to the angle at which it approaches earth to get to our eyes. That bends the light further, and changes the interaction between light particles and the stuff in our atmosphere.
“When it does so it not only scatters the blue light, but it scatters some of the longer wavelengths of light. The reds, oranges, yellows that we consider a beautiful sunset,” he said.
None of this is unique to Austin. Anywhere you are in the world, the color of the sky at sunset has to do with the amount of atmosphere light has to pass through and the stuff in the atmosphere.
But Austin residents were REALLY into this sunset hue.
The birth of a nickname
When Guzman was biking around and noticed violet crown moniker she was in Austin's Crestview neighborhood. Susan Burneson has lived in there since 1985. In the early 2000s, she started collecting stories from the neighborhood's history and how so many businesses there came to have "violet crown" in their names.She shared what she found on her website: Voices of the Violet Crown.
“I actually made it all the way back to 1888, there is a reference in the Statesman,” she said.
A snippet of the Austin Daily Statesman published in 1888. It may be the earliest reference to Austin's violet crown. (936x1176, AR: 0.7959183673469388)
It was around that time that writers in Austin started throwing the violet crown nickname around in their stories set in the city. Some credited O. Henry with christening Austin as the City of the Violet Crown in his work TicToq the French Detective in 1894.
A snippet from O. Henry's "Tictocq" story published in 1894. (526x162, AR: 3.246913580246914)
Starting in 1920's, the annual Violet Crown San-Sam Festival added another layer to the nickname's lore.
In 1925, there was a project in Austin to build the ideal home for the time, called the Violet Crown Home. The violet crown nickname would continue to be used in real estate marketing all throughout the early 20th century, but few had the impact Dr. Joe Koenig and Clarence McCullough had when they started selling land in what used to be north Austin in the '40s. They called their subdivision Violet Crown Heights.
Right alongside the subdivision, the pair built a shopping center in 1951. They called it the Violet Crown Shopping Center, which had a handful of violet crown themed businesses. The shopping center was also immortalized as “The Emporium” in Richard Linklater's coming-of-age film Dazed and Confused.
https://youtu.be/d8WHOiQZGok?si=YZD3R92v_pMfoErT
Austin’s Violet Crown sister
Austin wasn't the first Violet Crown city in the world. In Greece, Athens beat Austin to the nickname by a couple thousand years. The earliest references to the Athens' Violet Crown date back to 400 B.C.
Something else Austin has in common with Athens that might explain the coincidence is the presence of Juniper trees. Both cities have these trees that produce everyone's favorite light scattering pollen particle. Yes, the very one that causes "cedar fever" despite not resulting from cedar trees.
Ashe juniper trees, the primary cause of cedar fever, in Leander, Texas. (1024x683, AR: 1.499267935578331)
“Most of the stuff in the atmosphere is about 2 ½ microns, maybe up to 10 microns in size. Cedar Pollen is many times bigger than that, it's 30 or 40 microns instead of 5 or 10,” Yeomans said.
A micron is one thousandth of a millimeter. In other words, these pollen particles are much bigger than most of what’s in the atmosphere, so it scatters different wavelengths of light. Yeomans believes this might explain why Austin and Athens became the only two Violet Crown cities in the world.
“They too have this enemy allergen around, and that could explain why we have a similar atmospheric effect of the Violet Crown,” he said.
So how could these purple sunsets not be the biggest deal in town in the 1880s? Back then, Austin had the capitol, a few universities — and that's about it.
The city has since grown and adopted a few other nicknames along the way. But before the tech industry turned Austin into Silicon Hills, before the Austin Chamber of Commerce labeled the city the “Live Music Capital of the World,” and before people were constantly reminded to “keep Austin weird,”Austin was the city with an awesome sunset.
Fans at Q2 stadium hold up colorful sheets of paper to replicate a Violet Crown behind a large painting of some players on the Congress Street bridge with a giant bat hanging from underneath the bridge. (6336x4224, AR: 1.5)
As Jenna Guzman was biking around North Austin, she started to notice a familiar theme. Many businesses had "violet crown" in their names.
“There is the violet crown coffee shop, there's a church named after the violet crown, there's the shopping center,” she said.
The list doesn't end there. There's also a Violet Crown Tattoo, the Violet Crown Trail, the Violet Crown Cinema and more. That led Guzman to ask ATXplained: "What is the significance and origin of the violet crown motif throughout Austin?"
KUT producer Juan Garcia receives a tattoo at Violet Crown Tattoo in East Austin. Michael Minasi / KUT (3000x2000, AR: 1.5)
Unlike other nicknames for Austin, there didn’t seem to be an obvious reason for the moniker. “The Capital City” means the Texas capitol is in Austin. “Live Music Capital of the World” was a tourism thing.
Some of the earliest references to a violet crown date back to the 1890s. Writers of the era, including O. Henry and William Cowper Brann, described Austin’s sky as a violet crown. They were referring to the pretty purple hue the sky sometimes turns at sunset.
A nickname-worthy sunset
KXAN’s former chief meteorologist David Yeomans said the sky appears purple for the same reason the sky looks blue during the day. It has to do with the amount of atmosphere the light has to pass through and what particles the light hits before it reaches our eyes.
“If you think of the Earth as a round sphere covered by a thin layer of atmosphere, sunlight coming in to hit the Earth's surface and to hit our atmosphere is actually white,” Yeomans said.
The light from the sun goes through a filtering process as it passes the atmosphere. The light particles bounce off all kinds of microscopic stuff on its journey to our eyeballs.
KUT Reporter Audrey McGlinchy captured an example of Austin's violet crown sunset. (3024x4032, AR: 0.75)
As the sun dips behind the Earth at sunset, the light now has to pass through much more atmosphere due to the angle at which it approaches earth to get to our eyes. That bends the light further, and changes the interaction between light particles and the stuff in our atmosphere.
“When it does so it not only scatters the blue light, but it scatters some of the longer wavelengths of light. The reds, oranges, yellows that we consider a beautiful sunset,” he said.
None of this is unique to Austin. Anywhere you are in the world, the color of the sky at sunset has to do with the amount of atmosphere light has to pass through and the stuff in the atmosphere.
But Austin residents were REALLY into this sunset hue.
The birth of a nickname
When Guzman was biking around and noticed violet crown moniker she was in Austin's Crestview neighborhood. Susan Burneson has lived in there since 1985. In the early 2000s, she started collecting stories from the neighborhood's history and how so many businesses there came to have "violet crown" in their names.She shared what she found on her website: Voices of the Violet Crown.
“I actually made it all the way back to 1888, there is a reference in the Statesman,” she said.
A snippet of the Austin Daily Statesman published in 1888. It may be the earliest reference to Austin's violet crown. (936x1176, AR: 0.7959183673469388)
It was around that time that writers in Austin started throwing the violet crown nickname around in their stories set in the city. Some credited O. Henry with christening Austin as the City of the Violet Crown in his work TicToq the French Detective in 1894.
A snippet from O. Henry's "Tictocq" story published in 1894. (526x162, AR: 3.246913580246914)
Starting in 1920's, the annual Violet Crown San-Sam Festival added another layer to the nickname's lore.
In 1925, there was a project in Austin to build the ideal home for the time, called the Violet Crown Home. The violet crown nickname would continue to be used in real estate marketing all throughout the early 20th century, but few had the impact Dr. Joe Koenig and Clarence McCullough had when they started selling land in what used to be north Austin in the '40s. They called their subdivision Violet Crown Heights.
Right alongside the subdivision, the pair built a shopping center in 1951. They called it the Violet Crown Shopping Center, which had a handful of violet crown themed businesses. The shopping center was also immortalized as “The Emporium” in Richard Linklater's coming-of-age film Dazed and Confused.
https://youtu.be/d8WHOiQZGok?si=YZD3R92v_pMfoErT
Austin’s Violet Crown sister
Austin wasn't the first Violet Crown city in the world. In Greece, Athens beat Austin to the nickname by a couple thousand years. The earliest references to the Athens' Violet Crown date back to 400 B.C.
Something else Austin has in common with Athens that might explain the coincidence is the presence of Juniper trees. Both cities have these trees that produce everyone's favorite light scattering pollen particle. Yes, the very one that causes "cedar fever" despite not resulting from cedar trees.
Ashe juniper trees, the primary cause of cedar fever, in Leander, Texas. (1024x683, AR: 1.499267935578331)
“Most of the stuff in the atmosphere is about 2 ½ microns, maybe up to 10 microns in size. Cedar Pollen is many times bigger than that, it's 30 or 40 microns instead of 5 or 10,” Yeomans said.
A micron is one thousandth of a millimeter. In other words, these pollen particles are much bigger than most of what’s in the atmosphere, so it scatters different wavelengths of light. Yeomans believes this might explain why Austin and Athens became the only two Violet Crown cities in the world.
“They too have this enemy allergen around, and that could explain why we have a similar atmospheric effect of the Violet Crown,” he said.
So how could these purple sunsets not be the biggest deal in town in the 1880s? Back then, Austin had the capitol, a few universities — and that's about it.
The city has since grown and adopted a few other nicknames along the way. But before the tech industry turned Austin into Silicon Hills, before the Austin Chamber of Commerce labeled the city the “Live Music Capital of the World,” and before people were constantly reminded to “keep Austin weird,”Austin was the city with an awesome sunset.
Fans at Q2 stadium hold up colorful sheets of paper to replicate a Violet Crown behind a large painting of some players on the Congress Street bridge with a giant bat hanging from underneath the bridge. (6336x4224, AR: 1.5)