You could stand in the high-rise sheen of Austin’s 2nd Street District and not be certain if the concrete under your feet were in Dallas or California. Except for the fact the namesake street also carries the secondary moniker of Willie Nelson Boulevard.

From the trendy fashion boutiques to the cuisine-of-the-week eateries, the area could seem the antithesis of what Austin prides itself on—a distinct culture. Avoiding a disconnect from what Austin is famous for was on the minds of the creators of some of the more recent entries into the district, and set them on a design mission to ensure there was some definite Austin in the glass and chrome that begins at 2nd Street and Congress Avenue.

The creators of Second Bar + Kitchen and Congress in the ground floor of The Austonian condominium tower valued an Austin before the 21st Century. In fact, La Corsha Restaurant Partners—Jeff Trigger, David Bull, Scott Walker and Jeff Rhein—is the team that restored an Austin icon, The Driskill Hotel.

“We wanted to create a unique environment with multiple options for our guests to enjoy depending on their needs,” Trigger said of his newest operation, open for just more than half a year. “We hoped to bridge the sophistication of our space with the ease and unpretentiousness that is Austin, and our natural style of hospitality. We felt that bringing signature Austin touches into the interior was a great way to accomplish both.”

Those “touches” may be subtle, but they are right to Austin’s core.

For example, there is the bar facing in the Congress Bar. It may be a not-so-uncommon marble bar top, but the facing is right off The Drag and out of its hippie history.

Walker, a partner and vice president of operations at Second Bar + Kitchen, says it started with a simple purchase by a design consultant, Amber Lewis. She was shopping in the Renaissance Market, an open air jewelry and trinket market operated right off Guadalupe Street and the University of Texas campus. Walker said she purchased a “cuff,” a leather bracelet, from “two bohemian creatures” at the market, Link and Pixie.

It struck the designers the dark leather look created a warmth that would work well in the bar. It turns out the dye used in the cuff was proprietary to the artists’ family, meaning they had control of where the look would turn up. They made long strips of the dyed hand-tooled leather which became the bar’s distinctive facing.

Research turned up the fact The Austonian site had been a windshield manufacturing facility somewhere in its history. Walker said the designers found recycled windshield glass that were made into tiles and created a mosaic for the Second Bar + Kitchen wall as “an homage to years gone by.”

The walls in the same room are also formerly flooring from a home in Austin’s historic Clarksville neighborhood, one of the first neighborhood of freed black slaves in the South.

Walker said he had doubts when contacted by Trigger to be part of the services at 2nd and Congress. “When I left in 2007 (to work in San Francisco) there was a huge condo backlash,” Walker said. “When Trigger called, I was like ‘really man, a condo?’.”

But Walker said he felt the ground level retail could be a transition from the raw sleek above and surrounding.

“I did want it to feel very organic, to have huge touches of Austin in it,” he said. “I didn’t want it to be contrived at all. If it was too staid, too L.A., we would be dead in the water. Do people come in and really notice? No. But we definitely wanted to have a warm feeling in it.”

Proponents of the bigger picture are also keeping an eye on the Austin that went before while helping creating the Austin that will be.

Molly Alexander is the associate director of the Downtown Austin Alliance, an organization created to promote and represent Central Austin.

“There’s just something about our past and our future in the same place,” Alexander said, “as a way to connect to the community whether you’ve been here for a while or if you’re new here. “It’s a way to look back and look forward.”