Memories of the Frank Erwin Center

You might have noticed that a very large, distinctively shaped structure at I-35 and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Austin is slowly disappearing. It is, of course, the Erwin Center, which for more than 40 years anchored the southeast corner of the Forty Acres.

Demolition began last November in phases to preserve nearby structures and to recycle as much material as is feasible. By October 2024, it should be gone, and something even bigger will take its place soon thereafter.  

The first time I ever saw the Erwin Center was March 17, 1984. I was a junior in high school and had been invited to Austin for spring break by a friend and his family. The centerpiece of our trip was a concert by the band Yes. The strange, humongous structure, like a UFO whose alien builders had gotten carried away, loomed over I-35 and signaled, more so than even the distant Tower, that travelers had reached The University of Texas at Austin.  

When we got inside, the cavernous space went dark, and the opening chords of “Owner of a Lonely Heart” signaled a new chapter in my adolescence: the experience of big-time rock shows.  

It’s hard to believe that it had only been open for six years, as it seemed so grand and permanent that it must have always been there. But indeed, it had been completed in 1977 for $34 million. The Texas Men’s Basketball team opened the “Special Events Center” on Nov. 29, 1977 (with an 83-76 victory over OU, just to say).  

It did not become the “Frank Erwin Center” until 1980, the year its namesake, perhaps the most influential University regent of the modern era, died. The Erwin Center was a marvel of its age, second only to the Astrodome for indoor entertainment spaces in Texas.  

“The new facility is magnificent,” wrote Austin American-Statesman columnist Jim Trotter in 1977 of the 16,540-seat arena, “a testament to what $30 million and pocket change can do.”  

That building, whose functions—academic, entertaining, and sporting—are now performed by the state-of-the-art Moody Center just to its north, dropped in and out of my life like a recurring character in a TV series. As a college student, a UT staffer, a Longhorn fan, a dad, I knew the Erwin Center was always there.  

For starters, the arena provided a banging soundtrack to my student days in the late 1980s. I saw Metallica as an opening act—that’s how long ago it was. I vividly recall the 1986 Van Halen concert during which Sammy Hagar stood on the railing of a catwalk 50 feet over the audience, unsecured, and holding a steel cable with one hand leaned out over the abyss. Those tickets, many of which I have kept, sold from $13.50 to a staggering $16.  

Admittedly, not all memories of the Erwin Center evoke dreamy smiles of nostalgia. One case in point was the semesterly ordeal of adds and drops. As I wrote in the Alcalde in 1998:  

“It was one of those rare scenes in life where the architecture of your surroundings matches the situation perfectly, and even augments it—the lobby going around and around and around, nightmare-like, without beginning or end, without linear logic. It was a metaphor for our conversations with longsuffering department staffers:  

‘But I need this class?’  

‘Right.’  

‘But I can’t take this class?’  

‘Right.’  

‘But I need this class.’  

‘Right.’”  

The memory of adds and drops surely will temper the pangs of nostalgia I otherwise would feel when the last truckload of rubble is hauled away from 1701 Red River St.  

As student days drew to a close, the Erwin Center became the site of my college graduation, my parents and brothers watching from the lower “arena” seating section. When I returned to campus as a young journalist covering the University, I attended talks in the arena, including by the Dalai Lama and President Bill Clinton. I remember the memorial service for Darrell K Royal—Willie Nelson and Trigger providing the music.  

As I became a father, the Erwin Center became the site of numerous Harlem Globetrotters games in addition to the Runnin’ Horns, just as for other parents it had offered up Muppets on Ice or the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus—elephants parading from their railroad stop at Fourth Street north through downtown to their temporary home in the Erwin Center parking lot.  

The concerts continued into my adulthood—but the march of technology, the demands of touring shows, and the University’s desire to have the best was the writing on the circular wall. Even the Astrodome has long been replaced.  

So what will sit on the Erwin Center’s massive footprint? The first new components of the UT Austin Medical Center, established last year. Two hospital towers will be built on the site: the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center and a yet-to-be-named specialty hospital built and operated by UT.  

As I ponder all of that, I think of how this space will make possible, for thousands of people into the future, the sort of life-enriching moments that the Erwin Center hosted for me. A teenager will beat cancer and go on to attend a university, perhaps this one, and maybe they’ll study to be a doctor or nurse and make their rounds on this plot of land. A baby in need of heart surgery will survive and grow up to perhaps attend his very first big-time concert across the street.   

Big, unique, and audacious, the Drum was on brand in every way for this growing University and its surrounding city. Let it be thus remembered, and let us look forward to what’s coming. 

CREDITS: Courtesy of the Frank Erwin Center, Matt Wright-Steel, Jim Sigmon / UT Athletics