A 1961 control tower survives amid a modern rowhouse redevelopment built over the old municipal airport.
What Mueller looks like
A blue glass control tower rises from a landscaped plaza off , its walls flaring outward as they climb toward the observation deck. Apartment blocks in dark brick and pale stucco line both sides of the plaza, and an elevated pedestrian bridge crosses in front of the tower toward a cluster of gabled townhouses.
The residential streets nearby are narrow and tree lined, laid out on a grid with parking tucked into rear alleys. Rows of two and three storey duplexes and multiplex houses sit close to the sidewalk in painted fiber cement and stucco siding, with porches and stoops facing the street. A block of two storey row homes on uses a modern gabled roof profile with wood shingle and tile detailing.
An arched wood and steel hangar roof from the old airport shelters an open air stage at the edge of , where a fountain jets from the water in front of it. The same arch covers a weekend farmers market, its white tents filling the paved apron. A paved trail winds along the park's grassy edge and the scrubland beyond it, with rooftops visible along the ridge where it meets the built streets.
The Thinkery's red corrugated metal building fronts an open lawn near , its signage lit above the glass entrance. Restaurant patios and a cinema marquee line a block over. Toward the retail strip on , a row of blue flower shaped solar panels stands on tall steel poles beside the parking lots and big box storefronts.
Shot in Mueller
For Song to Song, the production filmed at a house going up on Mueller Boulevard while the neighborhood was still filling in with new construction. Rhonda and her mother stop to look at the site rather than go inside it.
Song to Song, 2017
Rhonda (Natalie Portman) and her mother Miranda (Holly Hunter) look at the house Cook (Michael Fassbender) bought for Miranda, still under construction at the time. The lot is finished today, built out as part of the Aldrich Street retail block rather than a house.
What Mueller can double for
Central Park in Denver, Colorado
Central Park sits on the old Stapleton airport and kept its own 1960s control tower as a neighborhood landmark, the same role Mueller's tower plays here. Both places wrap new rowhouses and duplexes around a grid of narrow streets with alley parking. Denver's tower has been preserved and converted into a brewery with signage on its base, so a clean plate needs a wide angle that keeps the ground floor out of frame. The thinner air and drier light there read differently from Texas in a long lens shot. Try searching preserved airport control tower now.
Playa Vista in Los Angeles, California
Playa Vista was also built over a private airfield and converted one of Howard Hughes's aircraft hangars into a landmark building, the way Mueller kept its hangar and control tower. The streets carry the same New Urbanist mix of rowhouses, courtyards and ground floor retail. Playa Vista's hangar is enclosed and used as offices rather than open to a lake, so a frame that needs open air under the arch will not match. Marine layer fog is common there and rare in Austin. Try searching converted airfield hangar building now.
Baldwin Park in Orlando, Florida
Baldwin Park is a similar planned community on a decommissioned military base, with the same narrow street grid and a mix of rowhouses, duplexes and single family homes close to the sidewalk. It has no equivalent to the control tower or the hangar, so it stands for the planning style in general rather than for one specific building. Keep the frame on the streets and houses rather than any landmark building, since Baldwin Park has no aviation structure to match Mueller's. Spanish tile roofs appear on some blocks there and would need to be avoided or dressed. Try searching planned community rowhouses streets now.
