Hotel Magdalena

It’s an exaggeration to say Bunkhouse owns this corner of Austin, but with the opening of their fourth hotel in the neighborhood, it’s not far off — the Hotel Magdalena joins the Saint Cecilia, the San José, and the Austin Motel as part of a growing mini-empire along South Congress Avenue. Hotel Magdalena is the only one of the four that was designed from a blank page and built from the ground up, in a style that gently recalls the 1970s, when Willie Nelson owned this plot of land, and opened the Austin Opry House on this very site.

The construction is mass timber, using wooden panels and beams in place of concrete or steel, a method that’s prized not just for aesthetics but for sustainability as well. The hotel’s elevated walkways and courtyards lend it a treehouse atmosphere, and the décor is also partiall an homage to Barton Springs and the region’s rural lakeside getaways.

Its 89 rooms and suites make it the largest of the Bunkhouse siblings, and while the singular design sense is the first thing you notice, these rooms are subtly luxurious as well — maybe not quite as decadent as but Saint Cecilia’s, but they’re in no way bare-bones. There’s a 900-square-foot swimming pool as well as a poolside bar, and Summer House on Music Lane will be a 45-seat open-kitchen restaurant, open for three meals a day. And while Willie Nelson’s concert venue is a thing of the past, memorialized in the photos that adorn the hotel’s interiors, live music will return to Music Lane just as soon as it’s safe.