That philosophy appealed directly to Hugh Liedtke, the chief executive of Pennzoil, who in the mid-1970s approached Hines to build a “distinctive” tower for his company in Houston. The design was by Bruce Graham, a principal in the Chicago office of SOM, and it suggested to Hines that there was immense profit to be made if blue-chip architecture could be coupled to rigorous budgetary forecasting and cost controls. The first was Houston’s immense Galleria mall, followed by One Shell Plaza - a 50-story, tapering shaft wrapped in white travertine that projected a lavish glare in the hot Texas sun. It came from Gerald Hines, an Indiana native with a mechanical engineering degree (from Purdue) and an adopted drawl (from Texas) who had cut his teeth developing anonymous commercial buildings but moved on to larger things. The success of IDS begat Johnson’s next skyscraper commission, which inaugurated a relationship that would benefit him for decades and reshape skylines across America. More than 20 years would pass before Johnson - who graduated from residential design to a roster of museum and university buildings, including MoMA’s Rockefeller Sculpture Garden in New York in 1953 and the “academic mall” at Houston’s University of Saint Thomas in 1959 - found acclaim with what remains Minnesota’s tallest building, IDS Center. To his great displeasure, she brought in the flamboyant English couturier Charles James to pair Johnson’s architecture with the kind of drawing room flourishes and fabrics Johnson then considered apostasy but would eventually come to appreciate. The commission was not without its contentions: Dominique was not inclined to the austere interior design palette - including Barcelona chairs and other Bauhaus favorites - that encompassed Johnson’s worldview. A neighbor called it “ranch-house modern,” which wasn’t far off. Its spareness was something entirely different from the other homes of River Oaks - mansions in period flavors - that in its own way testified to the glamour of its residents. Instead, light came in through a central atrium and large window walls facing the rear. Barely a window faced the street, and one of the few that did was an addition mandated by Dominique. Johnson’s design was, from the exterior anyway, almost as self-effacing as the tract house in which they had been living: a light-brick single-story court house in the Miesian tradition, set back judiciously behind a curving driveway. Their devotion to the arts had been charged in the years before their emigration by the charismatic Catholic priest Marie-Alain Couturier, who would commission Matisse’s murals for the Chappelle du Rosaire de Vence and Le Corbusier’s landmark Chapel at Ronchamp. Johnson satisfied on both counts, a sophisticated New Yorker who could bring his cosmopolitan ways to Texas. Yet a place in the polite society of the Museum of Modern Art mattered to them, as did the possibility of raising the cultural bar in Houston. Jean would Americanize his name, becoming John. Though Jean was a member of the French aristocracy - a baron - and Dominique an heiress to one of the century’s great fortunes, the two were unpretentious.
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