River Oaks & Bayou Bend: Houston's Grand Boulevard

In the 1920s, along a great bend where Buffalo Bayou loops through west Houston, the children of a Texas governor built the most exclusive neighborhood in the city. Will and Mike Hogg — sons of Governor Jim Hogg — and their partner Hugh Potter laid out River Oaks as a planned garden suburb, hiring landscape architects and shopping-center pioneers to protect its trees, line its boulevards with flowering esplanades, and restrict who could build there. Their sister Ima Hogg, a legendary art collector and philanthropist, built the family estate called Bayou Bend at the neighborhood's edge and later gave it, and her treasures, to the city. This drive rolls down River Oaks Boulevard past mansions set back on deep lawns, then into the museum houses of Bayou Bend and Rienzi, tracing how a governor's family shaped the look of moneyed Houston. Follow the driving directions and let each stop arm as you approach.