The longtime uptown Houston home of William Liedtke, founder of Pennzoil and former business partner to 41st President George H.W. Bush is hitting the market for $9.6 million
The modernist home designed by Texas architect O’Neil Ford combined the architectural influences of “New Spain” and Mexico and was built by Liedtke in 1967.
Liedtke founded the Zapata Petroleum Corporation with the future U.S. president in the 1950s and eventually merged the company with Pennzoil, which he founded with his brother.
The five-bedroom, four-bath home at 3 Longbow Lane features interior courtyards, overhanging roofs, brick vaults (bóvedas) and arches, carved-wood doors, and rambling internal layouts. The brick, tile, stone, and masonry elements were sourced near Guanajuato and Morelia, Mexico.
The 3.3-acre property, which overlooks Buffalo Bayou, also comes with a pool house with living and dining areas, a deck, two full baths, two pools and tiered patios.
Longbow Lane is a small peninsula of land that extends into Buffalo Bayou. In the 1960s, the neighborhood attracted some of Houston’s prominent business elite who valued privacy on their wooded lots.
The Liedtkes hired Ford to design their house because they were impressed by his work on Marshall and Patsy Steves’ “Hispanic” house in San Antonio. That home’s design was inspired by San Antonio’s Spanish Governor’s Palace, which housed the regional governor of Texas when the Lone Star State was a Spanish colony and a territory of Mexico.
Liedtke died in Houston in 1991. His widow Bessie lived in the house until 2022.
The home is being sold by Liedtke’s son William Liedtke III, an executive at Oklahoma City’s Bricktown Restaurant Group.
Ruthie Porterfield of Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty is the listing agent for the property.
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