A lot happened in Texas in 1927.

The “Santa Claus bank robbery” took place in Cisco, reformer Dan Moody became the state’s youngest governor at 33, the “mocker” was named Official State Bird.

And the Austin Development Co. filed the plat for the first section of prestigious Pemberton Heights neighborhood with the Travis County Clerk’s office. “In restfulness and beauty — no limit!” the lot sellers promised.

In those days, Austin’s population was 55,000 and the subdivision on the bluff overlooking the city, nine blocks from the University of Texas and 100 feet above Congress Avenue, was suburbia.

Now the family-friendly neighborhood located roughly between MoPac Boulevard (Loop 1) and Shoal Creek Boulevard and between West 24th Street/Windsor Road and West 29th Street is apart from the city yet a part of the city.

Developers announced that some streets in Pemberton Heights, which was planned by the Dallas consulting firm of Koch and Fowler, would have “homey $3,500 to $4,000 cottages” while “adjacent streets were reserved for $150,000 mansions.”

Today, real estate agent Simon Magnus with Coldwell Banker United says, “Prices range from about the low $500,000s for a bungalow to more than $3 million for an estate.”

“It’s unassuming from the curb,” Magnus says of his recent listing at 1407 Westover Road. “But the one-story, single-family house lives large inside.” The price: $749,000.

Built in 1938 and renovated with an open floor plan and large island kitchen, the cottage has three bedrooms, three full bathrooms, high ceilings, oak floors and wooden louvers throughout. Although updated inside, Magnus says, “It retains the overall contour and lines of the original. The footprint hasn’t changed.”

“We love the neighborhood,” says owner Hunter Brown, whose burgeoning family is the reason for selling. “It’s the main reason we don’t want to leave.”

While Brown needs more room, Aimee Laughlin at 2615 Harris Blvd. needs less. It’s why the 1938 home she lovingly remodeled and doubled in size is on the market for $1,435,000.

“We tried really hard to make it look as if it’s always been here,” says Laughlin.

The home’s hardwood floors are chestnut; the kitchen cabinets, antique reclaimed pine.

The second story she added is airy and bright. “I’m all about bringing nature inside,” Laughlin says. Her favorite place is looking out from the main-floor master bedroom to the walled backyard with its waterfall, lily pond and brick fireplace.

The former two-bedroom, one-bathroom house now has five bedrooms, four baths, three living areas, two dining areas and a mesquite-paneled office, where husband Brad Laughlin displays the gun, badge and vintage photos of his great-grandfather, a Texas Ranger and city marshal.

Aimee Laughlin lauds the proactive Pemberton Heights Neighborhood Association (www.pembertonheights.org), with its chatty newsletter and e-mail grapevine that lets neighbors instantly communicate concerns. “We take care of our own problems,” she says.

“Pemberton Heights is really a small town in a big city,” says Laughlin’s real estate agent, Debbie Gainer with Moreland Properties. “We can go to the pharmacy or grocery and see all our neighbors.”

“I like the Heights because of its close proximity to downtown,” says neighborhood association president Bryan Chester, director of sales at Dell Inc. “The historical character is maintained. There are not too many teardowns. There’s a spirit of cooperation, issues get resolved and the design of the lots is unique. There are some weird shapes.”

“I think it is crazy that in newer subdivisions all of the lot sizes are so similar,” says former Heights resident Larry Speck, former dean and current faculty member of the UT School of Architecture. “In Pemberton Heights, parcels vary dramatically, even on the same street.”

Initially, he says, that allowed people with a wide range of incomes to be neighbors. “And even though real estate prices in the whole neighborhood have soared, there is still more variety of incomes in Pemberton than there would have been if all the lots were the same.”

“Overall, property values have maintained here,” says agent Magnus, a 20-year real estate veteran.

Broker Laura Gottesman calls Pemberton Heights “A great place to weather the economic storm. I believe it has been very little affected.”

Her Gottesman Residential Real Estate specializes in luxury property, such as the distinctive 1927 Hildebrand-Scott House, offered for an undisclosed amount, at 2431 Wooldridge Drive.

Named for a colorful UT School of Law dean and the founder of the Continental Club on South Congress Avenue, the renovated home, one of the earliest in Pemberton, has five bedrooms, a pool with spa and breathtaking city views.

Another high-end Gottesman listing is the elegant Massey-Page Estate, offered for $1,480,000, at 1305 Northwood Road. Although recently renovated, the estate, built in 1933, retains the original hardwood floors, high ceilings and Peter Mansbendel-carved railings and mantel.

Austin-based Mansbendel was a master Swiss woodcarver, whose work includes medallions of past UT presidents in the Texas Union lobby. His friend, German ironsmith Fortunat Weigl, created the home’s ironwork at his Austin foundry, now Iron Works Barbecue.

Long a magnet for doctors, lawyers, UT professors and politicians, Pemberton Heights was home to Lyndon Johnson’s mother and sister, biochemist and UT professor Roger J. Williams, who discovered pantothenic acid, aka vitamin B5, and U.S. Sen. Ralph Yarborough, whose legacy to the people of Texas includes Padre Island National Seashore.

Lance Armstrong lived here. So did UT head football coach Mack Brown and Dixie Chick lead vocalist Natalie Maines. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Capstone Partners executive chairman Steve Hicks still do.

The neighborhood, part of the National Register of Historic Places’ Old West Austin Historic District, has so many venerable homes and points of interest that resident Elizabeth A. Cash has published the revealing “Sight-Seer’s Guide to Pemberton Heights.” Its 3.5-mile walking tour includes movie locations.

First stop is “The Castle,” aka the Fisher-Gideon House, at 1415 Wooldridge Drive. The ivy-covered limestone home is rumored to harbor two ghosts: a groom and his new bride whom he is said to have drowned in the former cistern. The groom was hanged there for the crime, the story goes.

“The history of ‘The Castle’ is such a gas,” Speck says. “It was originally a water storage tank, then a real estate office. And now it is a very gracious and expensive mansion. I love its ability to morph itself and accommodate change over time.”

No. 39 on the tour is the Catterall-Mills House at 2524 Harris Blvd. Built in 1937 and impeccably restored by owners Bryan and Jenni Chester, the Early American Georgian Revival is one of several Heights homes with backyard bomb shelters.

“That’s because the politicians knew that the B-52 bombers at Bergstrom Air Force Base made Austin a prime Cold War target,” Bryan Chester says. “It was hush-hush, but the politicians knew and wound up building them.”

Developers named “Austin’s Skyline Addition” for James Pemberton, an ancestor of the Fisher family, prior owners of the land. The Philadelphia merchant was a Quaker, an abolitionist and friend of Ben Franklin. In 1777, his pacificism got him arrested and banished to Virginia.

Until 1928, Shoal Creek prevented easy access to the bluff above Pease Park. That year developers funded a concrete arch bridge at Windsor Road and donated it to the city. Widened as part of the federal government’s Public Works Administration project in 1939, Shoal Creek Bridge is an Austin Historic Landmark.

In 1998, Town and Country magazine hailed Pemberton Heights as one of “25 Platinum Addresses in the U.S.” In 2007, the American Planning Association listed Old West Austin, which includes the Heights, among its “Ten Great Places” neighborhoods. And in 2011, Arcadia Publishing will bring out a photo history written by Elizabeth A. Cash and Suzanne Deaderick.

“I love the eclectic nature of Pemberton Heights,” Speck says. “It has everything from mansions to bungalows and includes architectural styles that range from cute little Cotswold cottages to Miami Beach Art Deco to Frank Lloyd Wright-influenced modernism. But they all seem to fit together quite compatibly.”