Preston Bolton’s House of Skylights

Houston architect Preston Bolton built this bright house for himself in 1970, on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou just west of Memorial Park. It went on the market earlier this week, listed for just under $2 million.

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The 5,261-sq.-ft. brick home has 5 bedrooms and 3 baths, but no garage — unless there’s one hidden back there among all the trees.

11 Comment

  • Brother, can you spare $2 mil?

  • What a lovely home. I live in a custom job from 1969 which shares some of the same design aesthetic, albeit half the size and gracious details. I think this house is what ours aspires to be when it grows up.

    As an aside, a dear friend of mine worked for Preston Bolton while an architecture student at Rice in the mid ’90s. Bolton wasn’t building new houses anymore, but was doing updates here and there for the houses he built for Houston society decades before. All drawings were still done in pencil on vellum, of course.

  • Who goes modern with what looks like saltillo tiles ?

  • Gorgeous…this to me says “Houston”. And saltillo tiles go with everything.

  • Peter A.,

    Architects who are not bending over backwards to show off any chance to make pointed breaks with the past. Compare also

    http://swamplot.com/99k-house-series-the-shotframe/2008-11-25/

    …for some thought-provocation about what approach to abstracting the past up and down really is modernistically humane.

  • They’re not Saltillo tiles. They’re concrete tiles and the color goes all the way through. No wear pattern like Saltillo. As usual, Preston was ahead of his time.

  • Bolton built my grandfather a smaller house in a little town called Weimar about an hour and a half west on Interstate 10. My grandfather passed away this year, so now we are thinking of selling the house. But it is such a gem! that we might keep it for visiting our old home. It has many of the Bolton touches, including the beautiful rectangles, satin-varnished woods, and walls of windows. For my grandfathers house, the whole thing was surrounded by a 6.5ft tall wooden fence, within which were gardens, so that every room became one with the garden outside the window. O! do I miss that home! (I’m in Manhattan now.)

  • Colin – Does your family still have that house?

  • We sold it to some old friends of the family. I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard they drastically renovated the insides.

  • Lovely home.