Top Architects Celebrate Their Beautiful New Book at a River Oaks Home — Bill Curtis and Russell Windham Build On Tradition

There may not be a plaque designating that a River Oaks home is designed by Curtis & Windham (yet), but there are signs. The restrained, classical sandblasted limestone in an organic pink rose tone derived from the stucco’s composition of reddish river sand. The sophisticated motor court. An entertaining salon thoughtfully separate from the private areas of the home. Dramatic black-and-white floor in the oval entry. And a view through the window perfectly framing an oval pool complete with a terrace canopy.

Lauded architects Bill Curtis and Russell Windham were fêted by Windfohr Design at the River Oaks home of Windi and David Grimes to celebrate the publication of their beautiful new book Building on Tradition: The Work of Curtis & Windham Architects (Rizzoli). Clients, close friends and family, including their respective wives Jane Curtis and Valette Windham, gathered in the salon of the stunning classical French-style home the firm designed in 2011, to toast 35 years of architectural excellence.

Their latest book (their first monograph A Vision of Place, Texas A&M University Press, came out in 2017) delves into an impressive variety of recent projects, each of which highlights the firm’s principles of historic and modern design with great consideration of the circumstance of each project. Curtis shares that their best idea for this second book was having his daughter Lucy McEachern Curtis write the thing.

“I think what’s great about the book is that we always try to tell a story with our pictures and our drawings, but this story gets told with the words — and it’s good scholarship, excellent writing with a wonderful sense of humor,” Curtis says. “She wasn’t afraid of Russell and I. So she just sort of stood up there and did it.”

Lucy Curtis walks readers through projects like the piano nobile or upside-down River Oaks house built for a frequent entertainer, the complex restoration of the midcentury National Register of Historic Places-listed Homewood House, and the dreamy Good Thyme Farm for the very same spectacular and creative client as Homewood House, with interiors by Miles Redd.

It is a diverse group of projects, to be sure. As Redd writes in the book’s foreword: “The thing about Bill and Russell which is so clearly evidenced by this book, is that they are up for anything as long as it is done with style.”

This is what makes them so accomplished at their craft — their application of classical proportions and techniques to a variety of architectural vernaculars, just as the original architects of River Oaks did in the 1920s and ’30s. They master scale and circumstance. Once a new Curtis & Windham home is completed, it immediately looks as though it belongs in the landscape.

Architectural historian Mark Alan Hewitt writes in the introduction: “Their work represents the most consistently superb design I have seen in decades, rendered persuasively in a wide variety of styles and scales.” The firm has received numerous accolades over the years, including the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art Arthur Ross Award, consecutive Palladio Awards and multiple John Staub Awards.

In a brief speech, Curtis and Windham jovially thanked their clients for taking their hunting dogs and their architects along with them to their vacation locales and gamely encouraged clients to embark on new projects with them to make it into their next book.

This book tour will span the country, with stops in New York, Los Angeles, Memphis, New Orleans and Palm Beach planned.

PC Seen: Cabrina Owsley, Amy Lee, Phoebe Tudor, Chesie Breen, Rebecca Rabinow, Renee Lewis, Sarah Lamb and David Larned, Ann Wolf, Ashley Holden, Kate and Steve Gibson, Lauren and Brock Hudson, Stephen Fox, Rebecca Rabinow, Aliyya Stude, Lucia Benton, Todd Beckendorff, Danny Ostendorf, Olivia Austin, Ruben Mijares, Mark Ofield, Meredith and John–Marc Monrad,  Bill and Mary Nell Browning, Carrie and Al Pepi, Carolyn and Chris Dorros, Sarah and John Hastings and Marley Lott.

Bill Curtis and Russell Windham will sign books in Houston on Thursday, October 2 from 6 pm to 8 pm at St. John’s School sponsored by the ICAA, and will be honored in Round Top on October 13 from 6 pm to 9 pm at The Halles at the PaperCity Designer Dinner, along with Ray Booth and the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art Texas Chapter. Curtis and Booth will sign their books prior to the dinner, from 3 pm to 5 pm at Red Antler Bungalows in Round Top. Both Curtis and Windham also will speak and sign books at Texas Design Week Dallas on Monday, November 3.