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River Oaks, one of Houston’s most exclusive residential areas, was developed in the early 1920s by Mike and Will Hogg, sons of a former governor of Texas, and their associate, Hugh Potter. Their company, the River Oaks Corporation, started with an option to purchase 200 acres of land four miles west of Houston on the south bank of Buffalo Bayou, surrounding the already flourishing River Oaks Country Club. To say that the Hoggs were undertaking a highly speculative venture is an understatement. Houstonians regarded Country Club Estates, accessible only by a dirt road, as the hinterlands; sales were less than brisk. The Hoggs leaned heavily on the allure of the country club’s golf course to stimulate sales, and reduced lot sizes from their original range of 3.5 to 14.25 acres to smaller parcels. The strategy worked, and Country Club Estates began to sell. The Hoggs retained Kansas City landscape architects Hare and Hare to provide a master plan for the new subdivision, which included home sites, a fifteen-acre campus for River Oaks Elementary School, two shopping centers, esplanades, and underground utility lines. Rigid building codes, deed restrictions and centralized community control assured exclusivity, and approval of house designs by an architectural panel was required.
There is a wide range of architectural styles evident in River Oaks, but strict controls have allowed the neighborhood to escape the more outré designs of the architectural fringe. River Oaks is famous for its impressive homes, designed by the country’s foremost residential architects, including John Staub, Birdsall P. Briscoe, Hiram Salisbury, and Howard Barnstone. Its most famous house, Bayou Bend, was a collaborative design by Staub and Briscoe for the Hoggs’ sister, Ima, an early and exuberant collector of American antiques. Her home is now administered by the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and houses the Bayou Bend Collection, a premier resource for American decorative arts. Several River Oaks homes are listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
River Oaks today encompasses approximately 1,100 acres, and the River Oaks Corporation has been replaced by the River Oaks Property Owners’ Association (ROPO). The Association maintains, from a central command center, a neighborhood security force with 24 hour patrols. It also handles permanent maintenance, monitors deed restriction compliance, maintains the esplanades and parks, and contracts for trash collection services. The subdivision’s borders are: Buffalo Bayou on the north, San Felipe or Westheimer Roads to the south, South Shepherd Drive to the east, and the Union Pacific Railroad track to the west. A one-acre tract of land in River Oaks sells in excess of $1 million.
Many of River Oaks’ residents are business, cultural, and professional leaders who prize the neighborhood’s proximity to downtown, the Museum District, and the Galleria. The Hoggs would be pleased to know that their high-risk location was, by the mid 1990s, the geographic center of Houston and a famous landmark.
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