River Oaks

Perhaps nothing can describe the elan of Houston's most exclusive residential subdivision better than the words of a limited edition book issued on the occasion of its fifth anniversary in 1928: "...if you had sensed the completeness with which architecture and landscape have been harmonized, had caught the color from flowered esplanade or sunflecked roof, had paused to quietly survey a stretch of marching green acres with the eye of one who appreciates peace and permanence in his place of abode, then you would have realized to some extent the far-flung design of River Oaks."

The development maintained strict architec-

tural control in offering a complete service to the potential property owner, and at the same time exercised nearly every possible option on site planning of detached housing. A drive through River Oaks illustrates the broad range of possibilities in suburban patterns, from the expansive estate to the denser clusters of houses arranged around courtyards off the street.

Property is still being bought and sold in River Oaks and the subsequent development has resulted in a near-catalogue selection of architectural styles, a representative collection of which is shown on the following page. A testi-

mony to the viability of the development is surely demonstrated as ever so often an $80,000 house will be torn down to make room for a new one costing $200,000.

River Oaks

Houston, Texas. Will and Mike Hogg, and Hugh Potter, developers. H A Kipp, landscape engineer. 1923

River Oaks is a 1100-acre development within the sprawling city of Houston. Originally known as Country Club Estates, it was planned in 1923-24 by two brothers, Will and Mike Hogg, and their friend Hugh Potter. The three envisioned an ideal community that would be a model of land use for a city then as now booming and without any form of zoning. 'What City Planning accomplishes by operation of law throughout the whole city,' Potter noted, 'the modern developer accomplishes by private contract.' Potter asserted that the residential developer 'is really planning your cities today, and especially so in Houston because it is unzoned.'¹ One of the other partners, Will Hogg, saw River Oaks as part of a campaign which included the reorganisation of the City Planning Commission, the creation of an urban park system and a civic centre, and the founding of the Forum of Civics, a public group devoted to city beautification and urban improvement.²

River Oaks is an enclave set between the natural boundaries of Memorial Park, the Buffalo Bayou, and the buffer formed by the River Oaks Country Club, developed a few years before the subdivision. Though largely a grid-

iron in plan, a number of modest interventions – cul-de-sac developments gently curving boulevards, planted esplanades, and small parks with lavish planting – form an overall impression of informality and spaciousness.

The development of River Oaks was influenced by J C Nichols' Country Club District in Kansas City; H A Kipp, the developer's consulting engineer was assisted by Hare and Hare, landscape architects from Kansas City. Like the Country Club District, River Oaks included shopping centres, sites for six schools and a church, lot sizes stratified to include a reasonably wide spectrum of home owners from the middle and upper classes.

In the early years, the developers built a number of model houses, many designed by John Staub located at the end of River Oaks' principal transverse axis Ball Boulevard (now River Oaks Boulevard). In addition to Staub, a number of other distinguished traditional architects including Frank J Forster and Ralph Adams built houses in River Oaks. Distinguished modernist houses have been built by Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone, and McKie and Kamrath.

Notes

1 Barry J Kaplan and Charles Orson Cook, River Oaks: A Planned Elite Community, *East Texas Historical Journal* 15, February 1977, pp 29-37.

2 Howard Barnstone, *The Architecture of John F Staub: Houston and the South* University of Texas, Austin, Texas 1979, pp 9-10. Barnstone discusses River Oaks as well as other, smaller developments in Houston. One of these, Courtlandt Place, clearly owes a debt to the private places of St Louis, but did not foster imitation in Houston. Shadyside, a 37-acre subdivision next to the Rice campus, was more influential. It is also notable for its houses designed by the New York architect Harrie T Lindeberg.

2 Corporation Offices (ph: Houston Home and Garden)

1 H A Kipp, 1924 plot plan

ARCHITECTURAL RECORD HOUSES OF 1975

3

Ethan's Glen is a townhouse development on a site in the memorial area of Houston, 18 minutes drive from downtown. The site is part of a pine forest through which a fairly deep natural gully ran—a problem and a challenge to the developers and to the architects. Instead of retaining it as a gully and bridging it to connect both sides, the architects proposed an earthfill dam at one end to create a lake on which the development could focus. The dam proved doubly useful: its top made an excellent bed for the loop road which had to be built to serve the development. All the townhouses are grouped in clusters of eight around the lake, and the club building of the recreation center, prominently placed at one end of the lake, actually sits on piles in it. The clusters of units, set among the trees, have a long-established look, thanks to the trees—large and small—which were carefully preserved. An ingenious solution to provision of covered parking, however, was the key means of saving the trees: parking (1.5 to 1) for each cluster is provided under half of the cluster by raising the living units half a level, and excavating half a level below grade.

Each two-story townhouse unit is part of an eight-unit building, and each has private outdoor space, screened by fin walls and fences, and shared green open space between the units and along the lake. All units have unusual and interesting volumes, even flat ceilings having a height of nine feet. Exteriors are cedar plank, or shingles left to weather.

The recreation center—a club building, swimming pool and lounge deck which projects over the water—is at the end of the lake farthest from the entrance to Ethan's Glen. The club building is a small but spectacular landmark whose transparency comes from glass walls enclosing a skeletal structure. Like the townhouses, the exterior is cedar siding, but inside, the ceiling is resawn redwood. The roof is blue metal.

Architects: Fisher-Friedman Associates
242 California Street
San Francisco, California

Owner/developer: Green Mark, Inc.

Project name: Ethan's Glen

Location: Ethan's Glen, Houston, Texas

Landscape architects:

Sasaki, Walker Associates

Builder: Green Mark, Inc.

Photographer: Joshua Freiwald

## Where does a new hometown start? Where does it end?

The Woodlands starts in the woods, literally. You'd appreciate it even more if you could see it from the air. Twenty thousand acres of natural forests, oak trees stretching their arms out wide, and pine trees growing straight and tall. Maples, birches, dogwoods shading mile after mile of land. All this just 25 miles from downtown Houston via Interstate 45.

That was the beginning.

When it's finished, there'll still be trees. And there will be approximately 150,000 people living among them. There will be retail stores and bike trails, light industry and sail boats, villages and homes.

Most important, there will be families. Families enjoying the benefits of the city and the charm of the country.

If that sounds good, read on. We want you and your family in The Woodlands.

## A new hometown needs roots. Here are three of them.

1. *The Woodlands is a 20-year project with real 20-year objectives.* The Woodlands' objectives were developed from extensive social and economic studies, ecological studies and population projections (more on this later.)

This helps assure that The Woodlands will be able to provide everything necessary for the families who live here, and the businesses located here.

2. *The Woodlands will be a full-service community.* When we talk about The Woodlands being a hometown, we mean just that. It will have, in large part, its own self-contained economy. Part of the concept of The Woodlands is to provide employment for a large percentage of the Woodlands' residents in the business parks and village centers.

3. *The financial commitment on the part of The Woodlands Development Corporation is extensive.* The financial commitment toward the development of The Woodlands is already over $100 million.

But by the time The Woodlands reaches maturity, the total investment of all those involved in the project will be $3 billion. The Woodlands has already received a $50 million loan guarantee from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Houston's growth has taken a northwest direction over the past few years and all projections indicate that this pattern will continue. The Woodlands is 25 miles northwest of downtown Houston and 14 miles from the Houston Intercontinental Airport.

The Woodlands

Perhaps the most detailed ecological
study ever undertaken forms the plan-
ning base for this satellite of Houston.

Situated 28 miles north of down-
town Houston, and directly in the
path of heavy regional growth,
The Woodlands is a 17,000-acre
property now being developed as
a Title VII new community by a
subsidiary of the Mitchell Energy
& Development Corporation of
Houston—George P. Mitchell,
chief executive officer. The
Woodlands received the largest
allowable HUD guarantee—$50
million against the sale of deben-
tures—and it is the largest of these
case-study new towns, with a pro-
jected population of 150,000 by
1992. But it is even more inter-
esting because of the thorough
and systematic planning and pre-
planning that have gone into its
early development. Mitchell's or-
ganization includes a heavy con-
centration of former Rouse staff
who brought to the planning of
The Woodlands many a lesson
learned at Columbia. This group
has been supported by an extraor-
dinary list of professional consul-
tants. Among them: William
Pereira Associates (urban plan-
ning); Wallace, McHarg, Roberts
& Todd (ecological planning);
Gladstone Associates (economic
analysis); Land Ventures, Inc.
(program management). Forty-
three other firms fill out the
inventory of consultants. The de-
cision to put together such a high-
powered, inter-disciplinary team
has made The Woodlands some-
thing of a planner's showcase and
a test of administrative skill.

Physical planning began with
an unusually detailed inventory of
the site's natural attributes—
geology, soils, planting, drainage,

wildlife—and the land use plan
was drawn from an analysis of this
ecological data. One-half the site
will be open space and wildlife
corridors reach through the site in
every direction. Under Ian
McHarg's direction, a system of
recharge basins and swales were
designed to control water run-off
and stabilize the area's uneven
water table. And an especially
elaborate, pure oxygen waste
treatment system will protect that
water table from pollution by re-
moving effluents and recycling
water for irrigation, fire protection
and replenishing steams and
lakes.

The Woodlands has other
features in its planning that make
it unusual even among new
towns. As a central element of its
plan, it will contain a 400-acre,
15,000-student campus of the
University of Houston, on land
donated to the university by the
developer. Another unusual fea-
ture: the city of Houston has in-
cluded The Woodlands site in its
area of extra-territorial juris-
diction, an arrangement expected
to be mutually beneficial.

Like the other new towns,
The Woodlands will offer a broad
spectrum of residential, cultural,
commercial and recreational fa-
cilities. Initial development is well
underway. Occupancy of the first
3,000-person residential neigh-
borhood is anticipated during the
first half of 1974 and construction
is nearly complete on a commer-
cial, leisure and conference
center. Certain recreational and
industrial components are also
part of Phase One.

Photographic Laboratories

ARCHITECTURAL RECORD December 1973

94

## Picking the right site for The Woodlands.

The total investment in the development of The Woodlands will eventually amount to $3 billion. With an investment of that size, the land you choose had better have more than just natural beauty.

These 20,000 acres lie in one of the last remaining major tree belts in the growth path of Houston.

It took eight years and more than 300 separate transactions to purchase the land.

Then, at a cost of $3 million, we brought in more than 30 of the most qualified consultants to determine how this land could best be used.

A few of these consultants include: Ian McHarg for Ecological Planning and Control, William L. Pereira Associates for Architectural and Urban Planning, and Gladstone Associates for Economics.

These experts were hired to aid us in achieving the primary goal of The Woodlands: to build with nature...not in spite of it.

The Woodlands covers 20,000 contiguous acres. That's 30 square miles, or roughly the size of Manhattan Island. (Indicated by dotted line.)

*Life in The Woodlands will be rich and varied because we've taken into consideration the real needs of people.*