Inside Houston’s New Level Of River Oaks Living — The Birdsall Puts the City’s Most Storied Houses In the Sky

The next level in Houston’s sky-high, lock-and-leave living, which still has a ways to go to catch up to cities such as New York, Miami and Chicago, doesn’t involve going higher. Only a phleb or a Russian oligarch worries about how much higher they can go up at some point. Instead, the natural evolution centers around how much more plush things can be, how the tower or complex one chooses can set itself completely apart from the crowd. The Birdsall Residences, Auberge Resorts Collection is more ambitious than an AI company and determined to raise that bar

The Birdsall Residences, which will share a building with while getting all the amenities of the first Auberge Resorts Collection hotel in the Bayou City, is coming more into view. Developer Transwestern is revealing more of the plans, giving PaperCity a first look at what to expect with brand new renderings of the residences that will be part of a new 34-story high-rise at the center of The RO. That’s the name of the new 17-acre mixed-use village that will be going up across from the St. John’s School on the former grounds of Exxon Mobil’s upstream research campus in River Oaks.

The new hotel and residences tower will feature abodes geared to compete with the best homes in Houston. That means bespoke interiors designed by River Oaks favorite Dillon Kyle Architects at The Birdsall.

“The directive that we gave him is ‘Let’s take something that would be a River Oaks home and just put it in a hotel,’ ” Transwestern project executive Sean Suffel says of the guiding mission his team hit Dillon Kyle with on The Birdsall.

Sometimes luxury in the sky requires staying grounded, remembering what makes those majestic River Oaks homes so timeless and forever appealing. Everything does not always have to be sleek and modern, especially not if it comes at the exclusion of everything else.

“The proportion of the terrace, the proportion of the windows, the fact that the windows go down to the ground, all these things were important to us to make sure that you did not feel that you had the constraints of a high-rise,” Dillon Kyle says of his design approach at The Birdsall. “It will feel very personal. Just like a house does.”

Kyle insisted on The Birdsall’s 44 residences staying true to house conventions rather than high-rise ones. That means no weird columns in these dwellings that show your typical tower realities.

“They just do not have things that (make) you say, ‘Oh, it is that way because it is a tower,’ ” Kyle notes.

Staying True To River Oaks

This obsession of staying more true to a traditional River Oaks home even extend to The Birdsall’s windows. The Southern architecture found in most sprawling River Oaks houses means windows that extend all the way down to the floor. So that’s what you’ll find in this tower.

Dillon Kyle’s feedback resulted in the terraces being widened and moved (all The Birdsall units now boast at least 500 square feet of outdoor terrace space), the center lines and columns getting altered and even the elevator core being moved around a little bit. It turns out collaborative tweaks, those details Kyle always obsesses over, make a world of difference. As a result of the changes, Birdsall residents will step off their elevator and be centered right on a window, rather than a hallway.

Sometimes luxury in the sky requires staying grounded, remembering what makes those majestic River Oaks homes so timeless and forever appealing.

The details in the units themselves are just as thought out. That means Gaggenau appliances and even dual Toto toilets (the kind that celebrities, including memorably Howard Stern, rave over) in the primary bathroom. The Birdsall will be a place where one can disappear into their residence. These are true River Oaks retreats that happen to be in the sky.

“The directive that we gave him is ‘Let’s take something that would be a River Oaks home and just put it in a hotel.’ ” — Transwestern project executive Sean Suffel

Of course, sometimes it’s nice to have a retreat that includes access to your own private residents-only club on the ground floor. Birdsall residents will have access to several places where hotel guests are not allowed. That includes a private residents-only pool on the 13th floor, a sheltered space partly covered by ironwork that is still open to the outside air.

The result is a pool that feels like it could be in someone’s backyard. Only, backyard pools do not have views of the city like this.

This is River Oaks living, but different. Much more convenient. With so much a quick elevator ride away.

Plans call for The RO village The Birdsall will sit at the heart of to bring six to eight new restaurants. “The idea is to bring things that are unique to Houston — to partner with the local chef community. This is going to be unique and very interesting stuff,” Suffel says. “We don’t want to translate this to national brands.”

The Birdsall hotel and residences pays homage to a very Houston figure — Birdsall Parmenas Briscoe (1876-1971), whose 50-year architectural career helped shape Houston. Auberge is known for hotels such as the Hotel Jerome in Aspen, but it’s owned by the Houston-based Friedkin Group whose owner and CEO, billionaire and storied AS Roma soccer club owner Dan Friedkin, is friends with Transwestern founder and chairman Robert Duncan. A hotel and residential component of the kind Auberge is known for delivering seemed like a natural fit for this beyond ambitious new development, this part of Houston.

Now, everyone is getting a closer look at just what that is going to mean.

The Birdsall Residences

Location: 3120 Buffalo Speedway at West Alabama

Expected Completion Date: 2027

Number of Units: 44

Number of Floors: 34

Architect: Kohn Pedersen Fox

Designer: Dillon Kyle

Developer: Transwestern

Sales and marketing of The Birdsall are being handled exclusively by Compass Development Marketing Group in collaboration with Laura Sweeney of Compass and William Wheless of Wheless Realty. For more information, go here.