HOUSTON – (By Ralph Bivins of Realty News Report) – It wouldn’t be right to call it an illegitimate offspring. It stands on its own as a place of high quality.
Only a few people know about this. But here is the cold truth.
Houston’s Pennzoil Place – the world’s most important skyscraper – has a son.
The son is now 51-years old and it’s 26 stories tall. It stands at the corner of Congress Avenue and Sixth Street, one of the most prominent locations in downtown Austin.
The building, originally known as the Austin National Bank Tower, has just been sold.
The Austin building and Pennzoil Place were both developed by the late Mr. Gerald D. Hines, the greatest and most visionary developer of the twentieth century.
But the DNA match between the two buildings runs much deeper than that.
The Austin building and Pennzoil Place were both clad with the same batch of dark bronze glass, a highly unusual exterior that made them stand out on bland skylines of sameness.
The amazing story of Pennzoil Place has been documented by many. The aggressive and demanding Hugh Liedtke, the chain-smoking wildcatter who was CEO of Pennzoil, wanted a distinctive headquarters in downtown Houston.
Mr. Hines brought in the architectural team of Philip Johnson and John Burgee. Their plan called for two, dark-glass Pennzoil trapezoids with only ten feet of empty space separating them. The tops of the towers were sharply slanted, not flat. When Pennzoil Place opened in 1975, the hubbub echoed on an international stage. The era’s trendy pop artist, Andy Warhol, traveled to Houston to take Polaroid snapshots of the towers. Pennzoil Place was named the “Building of the Decade” in 1975 by famed New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable.
Pennzoil Place changed the way corporations view corporate headquarters. Mr. Hines demonstrated a new, money-making principle at Pennzoil Place: buildings with great design can make more money than run-of-the-mill architecture.
After Pennzoil, finding a top-notch “Starchitect” to design a superior skyscraper became a reliable business plan for a developer.
Thereafter, cities and citizens around the globe benefitted as skylines became more interesting and more beautiful.
Pennzoil Place demolished old design norms and introduced what architects call the Post Modernism movement. It is the world’s most important skyscraper.
One little problem: the dark bronze glass that wrapped Pennzoil Place is a customized material. It’s not in-stock at Home Depot. And when you’re buying enough bronze glass to build two 36-story towers, bronze glass can be a budget buster.
To cut the price of glass, Gerald D. Hines Interests bought massive quantities of the material to get a buying in-bulk discount.
Stacking Pennzoil’s leftover glass in a warehouse was not a Hines-style option. Building the tallest building in Austin? That’s more like it.
So, using the same bronze glass, Hines built the 268,000-SF bank-anchored tower at 515 Congress Avenue, which is within walking distance of the Texas Capitol.
Was it Twinzoil Place? Or was it Pennzoil Jr.?
Hines hired Houston architect Si Morris, who was involved in the creation of the Astrodome, to design the Austin building. Unlike Houston’s Pennzoil Place, it does not have a trapezoidal shape or slanted roof line. But it was a significant bronze-skinned addition to a sleepy 1970s skyline where the economy was driven by the state government and the University of Texas.
A Pain in the Glass
Although the bronze glass gives the building a distinctive appearance, a few years ago I heard a weary maintenance complaint that replacing a broken pane can be a real pain when you have to find matching bronze glass.
Last week, it was announced that KBS had sold the 515 Congress building to a joint venture of Palmatum Ventures, AQUILA, and Glendon Capital Management.
JLL Capital Markets brokers Mike McDonald, Jonathan Napper, Ryan Stevens, and Drew Fuller represented KBS in the sale. In 2015, KBS bought the building from Stream Realty Partners.
On the blocks near the 515 Congress Building, Stream Realty Partners has acquired a number of Sixth Street properties for a major redevelopment effort.
Footnote: The Pennzoil Place is now for-sale. JLLL Capital Markets has the listing.
Sept. 30, 2026, Realty News Report Copyright 2026
Feature image: Courtesy KBS
Pennzoil Place photo credit: Ralph Bivins, Realty News Report, Copyright 1016
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File: Sold: The Son of Pennzoil Place