Location: 3688 Willowick Road, Houston, TX
Square Footage: 16,022
Bedrooms & Bathrooms: 6 bedrooms & 8 bathrooms
Price: $19,995,000
This exceptional English country style estate, dubbed Bayou Breeze, is located at 3688 Willowick Road in the River Oaks section of Houston, TX and is situated on a 3.7 acre bayou lot. It was designed by Curtis & Windham with interiors by New York interior designer Bunny Williams. It was built in 2000 and features approximately 16,000 square feet of living space with 6 bedrooms, 8 bathrooms, antique wood floors throughout, grand staircase, 2-story paneled living room with fireplace an wall of windows, paneled formal dining room with fireplace, gourmet kitchen with breakfast room, vaulted family/billiards room, den, elevator, media room, wine cellar with tasting area and a 2-car garage with a 2 bedroom apartment above it. The grounds feature spectacular formal English gardens with fountains, swimming pool, pool cabana, putting green, pergola with dining area and built-in BBQ and a separate guest house.
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Tags: billiards room, home theater, swimming pool, texas, wine cellar
Fantastic. Really a lovely home. Really wouldn’t think this was built in 2000. More photos here:
http://www.curtisandwindham.com/project.html?pid=95&gid=50&iid=1067
Thanks! Wow, I really love this home. It’s stately and charming at the same time.
Floor plan:
http://www.smarteplans2.com/Willowick3688_Overview.pdf
Those are the most exquisitely detailed floor plans I’ve ever seen. Fabulous. Love the “secret playhouse” that two of the secondary bedrooms share.
Thanks for your kind words about my floor plans … I had a blast drawing this house and doing the amenities text and yesssss….. the “secret playhouse” was my favorite part … I was determined to get it in and was delighted when one of the photos they decided to use “caught” it —which allowed me to get it into the drawing. Very , very cool house.
You’re very welcome. It’s a pleasure to see something like those plans that were done with so much care and thought. So many other real estate listings and accompanying materials seem to be thrown together as a series of grainy photocopies paired with A CRAPPY DESCRIPTION WRITTEN IN ALL CAPITALS, so it’s refreshing to see a detailed and coherent set of plans that have pretty much all the information you’d want to know right there in front of you.
…even though I could never dream of affording our subject property, it’s still nice
They should have used those pics for the listing…
That shot of the driveway approach with the house beyond is enough to make your knees weak. Achingly gorgeous.
OMIGOD!!!!!!!!!!! I have been following this house ever since the owners started quietly shopping it around back in March of 2011 for $26.5 million. I guess after nearly two years and without so much a nibble the owners decided MLS was the way to go. What I like about it is that it doesn’t look like it was built in 2000. My first impression of the house when I saw it 2 years ago left me with the idea/thought that the house was built in the 1920s/1930s and had been modernized throughout the decades. Its a job well done, very very nice. As far as the price goes, its quite reasonable considering the size of the lot and the neighborhood its in. The interactive floor plan is here:
http://www.smarteplans2.com/Willowick3688_Overview.pdf
I don’t like this house. I mean, I like the style of the house, but I noticed some significant drawbacks. First of all, the facade looks like a toy, I do not feel any comfort country house, but I also do not see the grandeur of style. Damn … It looks like a cheap mix. Second, the red room, I felt a bout of paranoia and it’s reminiscent of Hitchcock’s films. Third, I was expecting much more from a staircase of the Tudor style. This staircase does not use an incredible opportunity of English style. Alas, I do not understand the value of the house.
So… It’s fake.
It’s just plain gorgeous. It has a patina that is so desirable in a traditional house, but that new houses rarely achieve. And, it happens to be in my favorite Houston neighborhood.
what an astonishingly beautiful house! Curtis and Wyndham are probably the best historical practising architects in Houston. I’ve had the pleasure of walking into one of their homes while it was under construction- it was beyond architecturally correct and eminently refined and understated. Kenny, the firm should get a spotlight on the site so others outside Texas can glimpse their work.
I like it, but I don’t think it belongs in TX. I think it’s a house genre that evolved in climates much different then the hot, humid kind of environment such Houston’s. I see so many massive fireplaces which are room focal points, but will go unused much, if not all, of the year.
They have infrequent cold spells; but I see your point. However a perverse argument can be made that traditional fire-places are so wasteful to operate, that they are less damning to operate in a climate with very mild winters. They suck less valuable heat out of the house in Houston than they would in Minneapolis. Only wood burning stoves are actually remotely energy efficient.
Beautiful place. Surprised it has not sold.
Gosh. Hearing the words “English Country Estate in Houston, Texas” in my mind, spoken in a posh, BBC period-piece accent, seems quite surreal.
Definitely one of the best places we’ve seen in Houston. The front should have less “landscaping”, and I have minor quibbles with some of the architecture, but overall quite impressive and classy. I’ve been to Houston a couple times, and even more than some other places like the Midwest, I find the flatness strangely oppressive. I wish that, rather than giving it that half-stab at a English basement, which looks out of place, they’d just elevated the facade about 3 ft. and gently sloped the land up to it. Not sure that would help. But I just get a strange feeling when I’m in a place like Houston that everything there is going to sink into the bayou, as the breezes blow LOL.
This is a keeper! Wish it had a bit more land. One of the best houses on this si.
Read the Exclusions on the floor plans (thanks, Chris!): Basically, you can have the place for $20 million but we’re taking all of the lights with us. LOL! Cheap bastards.
Its Houston. The city practically rains money. I guess the owners feel that if you can afford a house such as this, then apparently you can also afford lighting for it. LOL
Drop. Dead. Gorgeous.
Update May 9 —Guys, per the Houston Chronicle (link attached) this home will be featured in a new Bravo TV series titled “Property Envy” due to debut sometime this Summer or Fall? The premise is a panel evaluates several high value homes per episode and discuss which one generates for them the most “property envy”.
http://www.chron.com/news/article/River-Oaks-estate-listing-star-of-Bravo-s-4486729.php
PS.. re the light fixtures … most homes of this calibre contain light fixtures that are multi-generational family heirlooms and usually don’t convey with the house. Consider also the buyer more than likely has their OWN (family heirloom) lighting they want installed. If this is not the case, the fixtures are replaced … its not like the buyer moves in and there are wires hanging out of the ceiling where the chandelier used to be. So excluding the light fixtures does not (usually) mean that NO lighting conveys with the house, but rather THAT lighting (showing in the photos) will not covey with the house. For me, since chandeliers are created prism-by-prism and its a labor intensive process to create them for the floor plan drawings — knowing what’s excluded up front is always helpful …. so I don’t draw the flippin’ item and then have it removed from the drawing if it is excluded.. EEEPS!