Some 33 years ago, with the help of a midwife, a baby was born in the back of Terra Toys on South Congress Avenue.

The parents, Charles Edwards and Romalda Allsup, were owners of the store, and they lived with their newborn Sylvia and her two sisters in the back of the shop in a small space separated by a cinder block wall.

"South Congress in the '80s was really so different than it is now," Sylvia Edwards said. "There were plenty of heroin addicts and prostitutes who would live in the back alley. It was very difficult in many ways, but it was a super cool place to be too."

Terra Toys, one of Austin's oldest and most beloved independent toy shops, arrived on South Congress in 1984, when nearby Guero's Taco Bar was still a feed store. Over the next decade, the retailer, which specializes in classic toys from around the world, was joined by funky secondhand stores, vintage shops and a mix of local retailers.

Those merchants helped transform SoCo from a red light district into an eclectic, fun and weird destination popular with locals and tourists alike.

"It was South Congress that helped us become iconic, and on the flip side, it was stores like us that made South Congress iconic," Edwards said. "We were making that street the place to be, and that street was making us the place to be. It was this symbiotic thing. It was this beautiful thing."