Tarrytown, Austin vs. Clarksville, Austin: a West Austin comparison

Where are Tarrytown, Austin and Clarksville, Austin, and what does 78703 cover?

Tarrytown and Clarksville are two West Austin neighborhoods inside ZIP 78703, and the ZIP is larger than both, so a 78703 search returns Old Enfield, Pemberton Heights, Bryker Woods and Windsor Road addresses as well. The City of Austin's park directory lists Reed Neighborhood Park, Tarrytown Neighborhood Park, West Austin Neighborhood Park, Mayfield Park, Pease District Park and Lions Municipal Golf Course all at 78703 addresses, which gives a sense of the ZIP's reach from the lake to 35th Street.

Clarksville has the clearest boundary of the two because it is a National Register district. The Texas Historic Sites Atlas records the Clarksville Historic District as "Bounded by W. Lynn, Waterson, W. 10th and MO-PAC Expwy." and listed on December 1, 1976. The Old West Austin Neighborhood Association, whose area includes Clarksville, says "Old West Austin is bounded by Enfield Rd, Lady Bird Lake, N Lamar Blvd & Mopac Expressway," and the City's list of adopted plans dates the Old West Austin Neighborhood Plan to June 29, 2000.

Tarrytown has no official line at all. The City's neighborhood planning-area layer contains no area named Tarrytown; the Central West Austin Combined Neighborhood Plan, adopted September 23, 2010 by ordinance 20100923-102, covers two planning areas called West Austin Neighborhood Group and Windsor Road, and whether a given Tarrytown address falls inside one of them is a map lookup rather than a given. The Tarrytown guide and the Clarksville guide on this site record every boundary and sourced figure for each, including why neither has a published neighborhood price.

Sources: City of Austin Parks and Recreation ↗ · Texas Historical Commission, Texas Historic Sites Atlas ↗ · Old West Austin Neighborhood Association ↗ · City of Austin Planning ↗ · City of Austin Open Data ↗

What is Clarksville's history, and what does the historic district mean for a buyer?

Clarksville was founded by a freedman in 1871, and its history is part of what a buyer is buying into. The Clarksville Community Development Corporation records that "in 1871, Charles Clark, a formerly enslaved man from Mississippi who had been living in Travis County, purchased two acres of land from Nathan Shelley, a former Confederate general," then "built a home for himself on the north side of what is now the 1600 block of West 10th Street and sold the rest of his acreage to other freedmen." Early residents organized the Sweet Home Missionary Baptist Church, and by July 1882 they had bought land for a church building for $50.

The Atlas lists the district's areas of significance as "Ethnic Heritage - Black, Exploration/Settlement, Architecture, Social History," with periods of significance from 1850 to 1924 and styles of "Bungalow/Craftsman, Late Victorian." The CDC's stated mission today is to "preserve the history of Clarksville, build and maintain a strong sense of community in the neighborhood and maintain the diversity of Clarksville through our affordable housing program"; it houses 17 low-income families in homes and duplexes across the neighborhood and runs the Hezikiah Haskell House as a museum. Our earlier post on Clarksville's history and a home search goes further into the community's story.

For a purchase, designation is address-specific. The City of Austin's historic properties page counts "nearly 700 historic landmarks," "8 local historic districts" and "18 National Register historic districts," says designated properties "require historic review for exterior changes and new construction," and directs buyers to its Historic Property Viewer map to check a single address. Old West Austin also holds three of the City's eight local historic districts, Castle Hill, Harthan Street and Smoot/Terrace Park, where "exterior site and building changes to contributing properties require review and approval by the Historic Preservation Office or Historic Landmark Commission" and qualifying rehabilitations can have "100% of City property taxes on the value added from the rehabilitation" abated "for 7 to 10 years."

Sources: Clarksville Community Development Corporation ↗ · Texas Historical Commission, Texas Historic Sites Atlas ↗ · City of Austin Planning ↗ · Old West Austin Neighborhood Association ↗

Is Tarrytown a historic district?

Tarrytown is not a historic district, and it is not inside the Old West Austin National Register district that listings sometimes place it in. The Texas Historic Sites Atlas records the Old West Austin Historic District, listed September 12, 2003, as "Roughly bounded by West 13th, Lamar Blvd., W. 35th, and Mo-pac Expressway," and this site's Tarrytown guide notes that the district covers Old Enfield, Pemberton Heights and Bryker Woods rather than Tarrytown. The West Line Historic District, listed October 12, 2005, runs "Roughly bounded by Baylor Street, W. Fifth & Sixth Streets, Mopac Expressway (Loop 1), and Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets," also east of Tarrytown.

That does not make a Tarrytown house free of review. The Historic Landmark Commission "reviews proposed exterior changes to all these resources, as well as demolitions and relocations of 45+ year-old buildings eligible for landmark designation," a rule that is not limited to designated districts, and individual Tarrytown properties can carry their own landmark designation. A 1940s cottage on a large Tarrytown lot can therefore draw a demolition review that a designated Clarksville bungalow's owner might have expected and the Tarrytown buyer did not.

The practical order of work for either neighborhood: open the City's Historic Property Viewer for the exact address, note whether it is a landmark, inside a local district, inside a National Register district or none of these, and only then price the alteration you have in mind. Our guides to buying an older Austin home and to renovating in a historic district cover the review steps in detail.

Sources: Texas Historical Commission, Texas Historic Sites Atlas ↗ · City of Austin Planning ↗

Which parks, pools and green space does each neighborhood touch?

Tarrytown's public open space is unusual for a central Austin neighborhood because it includes a 155-acre golf course, a 41-acre district park and a 23-acre preserve with peacocks, all listed by the City's park directory at 78703 addresses. For Clarksville, the directory lists West Austin Neighborhood Park at 1317 W. 10th Street, 3.27 acres, on the street where the CDC records Charles Clark building his home in 1871, and Pease District Park at 1100 Kingsbury Street, 41.49 acres.

Lions Municipal Golf Course, at 2901 Enfield Road, is the largest. The City's GolfATX page says "in 1924, the Lions Club opened Lions Municipal, the first public golf course in the city," on land leased from the University of Texas's Brackenridge Tract, and that the course is "listed on the Registration of National Historical Places by the National Park Service" and "recognized as one of the first courses in the South to desegregate prior to the Supreme Court decision in Brown V. Board of Education in 1954." Mayfield Park's cottage was built between 1860 and 1880, purchased by Allison Mayfield in 1909, and willed to the City by Mrs. Gutsch in 1971; the peacocks descend from birds gifted in 1937, and the park is open every day from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Deep Eddy Pool at 401 Deep Eddy Avenue is the nearby swimming draw. The City calls it "the oldest swimming pool in Texas," built as a concrete pool in 1915 by A.J. Eilers Sr., filled from wells on site, and open in 2026 from March 14 through October 31 with Tuesdays closed. The City's pool fee schedule charges $5 for a resident adult and $9 for a non-resident at Deep Eddy, Barton Springs and the other regional pools it names, from Austin ISD spring break through the end of October. Our post on Tarrytown's parks and a home search shows how to use them as the day's structure.

Sources: City of Austin Parks and Recreation ↗ · City of Austin GolfATX ↗

How do you get downtown from Tarrytown or Clarksville by bus?

Tarrytown and Clarksville share one CapMetro local route, the 18 Martin Luther King; CapMetro's Rapid lines run other corridors, North Lamar and South Congress for the 801 and Burnet Road and South Lamar for the 803. The 18's schedule effective August 16, 2026 through January 9, 2027 shows the route entering the area by Exposition Boulevard, Lake Austin Boulevard and Enfield Road, crossing MoPac, and running by 15th Street into downtown, then to the University of Texas, Dell Seton Medical Center and MLK Station before continuing east to the Expo Center Park & Ride. Its listed destinations include O. Henry Middle School, LCRA, an HEB and Fresh Plus Grocery on the west end.

A local route stops more often and runs less frequently than the Rapid lines, so the useful test is a timed trip from the candidate address at the hour you would ride, using CapMetro's trip planner, including the walk to and from the stop on Exposition or Enfield. A Clarksville address near West Lynn Street and a Tarrytown address near Exposition and Windsor can share a bus and still have very different walks to it.

The same applies on foot and by bike. Our route test for a move to Austin and the earlier field note on Tarrytown on foot describe how to walk a shortlist's daily routes before an offer, and which crossings on Enfield, Windsor and Exposition to time rather than assume.

Sources: CapMetro ↗

What do Tarrytown and Clarksville homes cost, and what happens to the tax bill when a long-held home sells?

No primary publisher reports a Tarrytown, Clarksville or 78703 median sale price. Unlock MLS's August 2026 Central Texas Housing Report gives the City of Austin a median of $560,000, down 4.3% year over year on 844 closed sales, with 4.6 months of inventory and an average close-to-list price of 93.3%; the metro median was $412,000. The market page carries those figures each month, and none of them is a 78703 price. For a shortlist, the comparison that holds up is the last few closed sales of similar homes on similar lots in the same neighborhood, which David can pull from the MLS for any address; you can browse 78703 homes for sale on the listings page and run any asking price through the payment estimator there.

What a 78703 buyer should model instead is the tax reset. Texas caps the annual increase in a homestead's appraised value at 10% of the prior year's appraised value plus new improvements, but the Comptroller's guidance says the limitation "takes effect on Jan. 1 of the tax year following the year the property owner qualifies for the homestead exemption" and "expires on Jan. 1 of the tax year following the year the property owner no longer qualifies." A house held for decades in Tarrytown or Clarksville can carry an appraised value far below market; when it sells, the cap expires with the seller, the buyer is appraised at market value, and the buyer's own cap only begins the year after they qualify. Budget from the parcel's market value, not the seller's last bill.

The taxing units are the same for both neighborhoods: the City of Austin, whose adopted rate for fiscal year 2026-27 is $0.579948 per $100 of assessed valuation per its August 12, 2026 budget release, plus Travis County, Austin ISD, Austin Community College and Central Health. The Travis Central Appraisal District's 2026 exemption listing shows what each unit exempts from a homestead.

The Comptroller notes that the general filing deadline for an exemption application is before May 1, and that a school district must exempt $140,000 of a homestead's value. Our post on budgeting from the actual parcel walks the full bill, and the property research desk lists the records to pull for an address.

Sources: Unlock MLS ↗ · Texas Comptroller ↗ · City of Austin ↗ · Travis Central Appraisal District ↗

How should you compare a Tarrytown address with a Clarksville address on showing day?

Write down the alterations that are essential to your purchase before the first showing in either neighborhood: an addition, a second unit, a garage conversion, a new front entrance or a larger outdoor room. Then check the exact address in the City's Historic Property Viewer, because a Clarksville bungalow inside the National Register district and a 1950s Tarrytown ranch can each face review, and neither the neighborhood name nor the listing description settles which.

On both visits, walk the space outside the rooms. Note how you would arrive with groceries, where bins go, where a guest parks, how the yard slopes and where water appears to collect, and check the address on ATXFloodPro.com; these are prompts for the inspection and survey, not diagnoses. A large Tarrytown lot can offer less usable outdoor room than a small Clarksville lot with a better layout, and a renovated house in one neighborhood next to a project in the other can create a misleading impression of neighborhood value.

Keep the asking price separate from the work, get qualified estimates for anything essential, and compare the two homes at similar levels of readiness. Then bring both addresses and your notes to David; he can pull closed comparables for each street, the parcels' appraisal, exemption and permit history, and a payment scenario at this week's rate. Start the conversation here.

Sources: City of Austin Planning ↗