Buford Tower
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Austin Fire Drill Tower
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Viewed from the north in 2014
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| Location | 201 W. Cesar Chavez St. Austin, Texas |
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| Coordinates | 30°15′49″N 97°44′45″W / 30.2636°N 97.7459°WCoordinates: 30°15′49″N 97°44′45″W / 30.2636°N 97.7459°W |
| Area | Less than 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
| Built | 1930 |
| Architect |
Hugo Kuehne J. Roy White |
| Architectural style | Italianate |
| NRHP Reference # | 16000720 |
| Added to NRHP | October 11, 2016 |
Buford Tower (formerly the Austin Fire Drill Tower) is a tower standing along the north shore of Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin, Texas. The structure was originally built in 1930 as a drill tower for the Austin Fire Department, but it now serves as a bell tower and landmark. Named after fire department Captain James L. Buford, the structure has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 2016.
Austin first established a professional fire department in 1916. On December 26, 1929, City Council authorized construction of a fire drill tower on a parcel of land along the Colorado River downtown, where the river could provide water for testing fire hoses and extinguishing training fires. The tower was built in 1930 at a cost of $6,200, and immediately began to be burned and flooded regularly during training exercises and the testing of equipment. It also served as a backdrop for fire department photographs, social events, and public firefighting demonstrations.
As decades passed, firefighting technology advanced, and Austin's buildings grew taller. In the 1960s, snorkel trucks gave the city's firefighters access to higher windows than could be reached with traditional ladders, and the tower's value as a training facility declined. At the same time, the growth of the city meant that the drill tower, originally built near the southern edge of town, was now crowded by tall modern buildings and heavy traffic, making the training fires a growing hazard to downtown. Finally, in 1974 the fire department opened a new training tower in southeast Austin, and the original Fire Drill Tower was closed.
The tower stood unused and untended for years, and its unglazed windows allowed it to become infested with pigeons; eventually the city marked the structure for demolition. In 1978, however, Effie Kitchens (the widow of the tower's original builder) led a public campaign, together with the Austin chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction, to raise funds for the tower's restoration. The campaign raised $45,000, of which Kitchens personally contributed $30,000.
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