Look Up at 711 Louisiana and Watch the Towers Change Shape
Stand on the sidewalk at 711 Louisiana Street in Downtown Houston and pick a corner of the block. The two dark bronze towers of Pennzoil Place rise above you, mirror images of each other and set just ten feet apart, so that from one angle they read as a single mass and from another they split into a pair. Walk to the opposite corner and the silhouette rearranges itself again. That is not a trick of your eyes — the building was deliberately designed as an optical illusion, and its appearance shifts with every viewing location. Designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee of Johnson/Burgee Architects from a concept by Eli Attia, and completed in 1975, Pennzoil Place is widely credited with breaking the modernist glass box and introducing the era of postmodernism. The New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable named it "Building of the Decade" in 1975 for the dramatic silhouette it added to the Houston skyline, and it is Houston's most award-winning skyscraper.
Step Inside the Glass Pyramid and Read the Facade
The whole street-level plaza joining the two structures is enclosed in a glass pyramid-shaped atrium, and it is the part of the building you can actually walk through. Get close to the curtain wall: closely spaced bronze-anodized aluminum mullions hold bronze-tinted, double-paned solar glass, and the towers are sheathed in dark bronze glass and aluminum throughout. Look for the splayed inner walls, the counterposed tops and the tilted glass planes of the plaza roofs — the details that make the geometry work. The basement-level concourse connects to Houston's downtown pedestrian tunnel system, so you can arrive or leave underground. The interior offices were designed by M. Arthur Gensler Jr. & Associates of San Francisco.
- Circle the full block to see the trapezoidal towers from every side — the illusion only reveals itself as you move.
- Stand in the atrium and look up through the glass pyramid that roofs the plaza between the towers.
- Find the ten-foot gap where the two mirror-image towers part above ground level.
- Use the tunnel concourse to link your visit to the rest of downtown on foot.
Time Your Visit for the Light and the Skyline
Because the facade is dark bronze glass, the building's character depends on the sky and the sun, and the design rewards slow looking rather than a quick snapshot. Give yourself time to walk the block more than once — the point of Pennzoil Place is that it looks different from different locations, so a single vantage point sells it short. The highlight not to miss is the moment the two towers stop reading as twins and start reading as counterposed shapes; find it by moving along Louisiana Street and around the corners rather than standing still. Pair the visit with a walk through the surrounding downtown streets, where the towers' silhouette sits in the skyline Huxtable praised.
Carry On to Houston's Monuments and Cathedral
Pennzoil Place sits on a full city block in the heart of downtown, which puts several other landmarks within an easy onward walk. Continue your day at the Alexander Hodge Memorial, Christ Church Cathedral, Large Spindle Piece, Monument au Fantome, Tolerance and the World War I Monument — each a separate stop worth planning into your route.
Plan Your Walk Through Downtown Houston
Start with a map of the downtown blocks around 711 Louisiana Street, mark the corners you want to view the towers from, and build the rest of your day around them. Whether you come for the architecture, the skyline or simply to stand in the glass atrium, Pennzoil Place rewards the traveler who takes the time to look twice.