In the hot summer months, hotels with rooftop pools have a special allure. One of the most striking is located at the top of The Joule in Dallas. The Joule is part of the Luxury Collection and is located near attractions such as Victory Park, the Dallas Museum of Art and the original flagship Neiman Marcus. The building's 1920s Neo-Gothic façade has been restored and added to with a new 10-story tower which is topped by the cantilevered rooftop pool and bar area. The pool actually juts out over the edge off the building with just a heavy layer of glass separating water and the swimmers from the city below (check out an amazing shot by The Urban Fabric on Flickr here). Simply amazing.
The hotel also includes Charlie Palmer's new signature restaurant - Charlie Palmer at The Joule and Next Vintage, a retail wine store. Palmer's restaurant will also offer light-fare menu at the rooftop pool bar. Rates for the hotel start around $250 per night.
The Lone Star State, which was part of Mexico until 1836, is not particularly known for its architectural treasures. There are some amazing estates scattered among its vast tracts, however, as author Lisa Germany and photographer Grant Mudford reveal in their excellent new book, Great Houses Of Texas (Abrams, $50). The Texan landscape -- "combined with the larger-than-life personalities who were drawn to the brutal hardships of the frontier and the architects who designed these extraordinary homes" -- is the unifying theme of the 25 houses, ranging from the intimate to the ornate, collected in the book. Among them is the beautiful Crespi Mansion in Dallas, designed by Swiss architect Maurice Fatio in 1939, pictured above; and the Nowlin House in Austin designed by Paul Lamb in 2002, which was partially based on Mayan ruins. See the gallery for more.
I found today's home in North Dallas,Texas interesting because it's a home built in the late 1960s which has been given a modern makeover. The home looks fairly traditional on the outside but inside it's bright white and contemporary with a large atrium, gallery, and a beautiful garden room with glass walls. The home sits on three acres on the Preston Trails golf course with views of a creek, fairways, waterfalls. The five bedroom home also includes an exercise room, home theater, maid's quarters and more over 14,000 square feet. Outside there is a pool and spa with an odd patio arrangement and a pool house that is also home to a wine cellar. This home is listed at $8 million.
For the next couple of weeks we will be checking out some homes in the most expensive zip codes in the United States, up today, 75220. This zip code refers to a part of Dallas, Texas. This zip code includes the prestigious Preston Hollow area and has a median price of $1,530,000 with an appreciation rate of 160% since 1990.
Today's estate is done in an English Country style and is over 15,000 square feet. There are three levels, plus a lower level which are accessible through seven staircases and an elevator. The first level includes a two-story entrance, living room, dining room, library, family room, office, sunroon and a large kitchen that includes a Viking stove top and a hammered copper vent hood.
The second level is home to the master bedroom with his and hers baths, dressing rooms and a sunroom. There are also three additional en suite bedrooms on this level as well as a playroom, a five-desk computer/office area and a full-service laundry with a drip-dry area. The third level is a furnished space that also has a kitchenette and a full bath. The bottom level has a den or game room; a stone floored corking room; a pine-paneled smoking room; a media room; a sunlit workout/fitness center and a fifth bedroom with full bath. The property also includes a three-car garage, an outdoor area with a fireplace and grilling space and a swimming pool with a dramatic slate-backed water wall. This new home has been expertly staged (read an article about the stager here). It is listed at $8.6 million.
Gallery: Most Expensive ZIp Codes, 75220, Dallas, TX
Dallas billionaire and sports team owner, Tom Hicks is able to do something a lot of other billionaire sports owners are not, he gets double duty from his new Boeing 757. Not only is his hockey team, the Dallas Stars using the plane but his baseball team, the Texas Rangers, will use the same plane once their season comes around. The plane probably won't be too much help for his other sports ownerships, Mesquite Championship Rodeo and 50 percent of the English football (soccer) team Liverpool FC.
Dallas is full of condo-hotel projects and they just keep getting more intriguing. As the the Dallas Morning News reports, the Hotel Palomar is trying to be the hipster hotel in Dallas. Now next to the Trader Vic's restaurant, you can find Brüt, a champagne store and lounge that is small but manages to stock 160 champagnes and sparkling wines on its shelves. The store generally pours three kinds of champagne each day.
You can also extend your stay at the Hotel Palomar permanently. The Residences at Palomar include condos, lofts and courtyard homes. The development includes the Exhale spa, a fitness center and several restaurants. The nine-story tower is home to 55 units ranging in price from ranging from $350,000 to $2.5 million for a penthouse.
This home in Dallas, Texas has a quiet charm. The white manor style home has three levels of living space and there is also a two-story guest house/cabana, an outdoor cooking, dining and living space and a lagoon pool and spa that are all connected to the house. The home is full of luxury appointments but the scale of the home is very intimate with smaller rooms rather than large echoing spaces. The round dining room has an oversized wood-burning fireplace with marble surround and a domed ceiling with coved lighting. The living room has very attractive bookcases and cabinets and there is also a mahogany-paneled library with French doors leading to a covered terrace. The sunroom has a bead-board ceiling, stained concrete floors, flat-screen television and French doors opening onto covered terraces. The kitchen includes a vegetable sink with disposal, built-in cutting board, icemaker, Miele dishwasher, two refrigerator drawers and a breakfast bar. A butler's pantry has a Viking warming drawer, wine refrigerator, trough sink and a china and silver closet. A bar area is equipped with a copper sink, refrigerator and icemaker. The master suite has a cast-stone fireplace with flat-screen television above, a private covered terrace, and a marble bathroom with an infinity-edge spa tub and a dual head shower plus rain head, The suite also has a coffee bar with sink and refrigerator. The lower level has a media room with adjacent kitchen area, exercise room, wine cellar with capacity for approximately 2,500 bottles, a very nice guest room, and full bath. The outdoor living room has a stacked stone fireplace and a 48" Wolf grill with two side burners, refrigerator and icemaker. The guest house/cabana has a living room, kitchen and a full bath on the first floor and a guest room and full bath on the second. The pool area seems a bit crowded but otherwise this is a very gracious home. Other details include a slate roof with copper gutters, an Elan central audio/video computerized system with touch panels and speakers in most rooms and an emergency power generator running on a natural gas line. It is listed at $5.295 million. After the jump, dining in the round.
We are back in the Dallas area for another condo-hotel. This one, the Lakeside Resort & Residences, is the first luxury high rise for the charmingly named town of Flower Mound, The Lakeside will be an 18-story tower located on Lake Grapevine. The building will be home to a 289-room four-star hotel with a luxury day spa, two restaurants and event space. All that will be topped by 64 units of one, two and three-bedroom luxury condominiums. Construction is set to be done in fall of 2008 and pre-construction pricing for the condos is set from under $400,000 to around $1 million excluding the ten penthouse units will have up to 3,500 square feet of space.
Skiing in Texas? Texas is creating a ski slope where no slope existed before. Bearfire Resort will be a man-made mountain that will feature ski slopes spread over 650,000 square feet in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Bearfire Resort will also have a 600-room hotel, a convention center, and a spa at the base of the ski mountain. Bearfire will use virtual ski surface technology called Snowflex, which is currently being used at a bunch of places in Europe. The resort's main attraction will be its outdoor ski and snowboard mountain with ski runs, chair lifts, competition half-pipes, toboggans, snow tubing, and ski caves. When it is completed, the man-made mountain range will rank among the world's largest buildings. The project is expected to cost $375 million and should be completed in 2008.
What's the most important room in a house for you to see in a listing? For me it's the kitchen, partially because it is often the most expensive room in a house to rehab and also because so many older houses have a remodeled kitchens that doesn't match at all with the rest of the house. Today's listing does not have a kitchen shot which is a shame since the rest of it is a bit of a charmer. It's located in the pricey and pretty town of University Park, Texas. The home was built in 1936 and has four bedrooms and over 5,000 square feet of space. The home has a cottage-like feel despite the large space with many fireplaces, a master suite with his and hers marble bathrooms and a sitting room, French doors, bay windows and a library with pine bookshelves. It's not on a whole lot of land (less than a half an acre) but it does have a gunite pool. It is listed at $3.795 million. After the jump, a pink room that tests your sweet tooth.
Whole Foods Markets is getting into the spa business. The natural supermarket opened Refresh--The Everyday Spa at Whole Foods Market last week in a Dallas store. The 4,500-square-foot spa has seven treatment rooms and offers scrubs, massages and other treatments. There is also a private balcony where lunch from a special spa menu is served and a shop which sells beauty products and organic clothing. The spa is on a second floor removed from the hubbub of the grocery store and for $20 per hour you can ditch your shopping list at the concierge desk and get a massage while someone else picks up your groceries. If the spa works out well in Dallas then the concept will be rolled out to other stores.
I've mentioned the DFW Car Club before as part of my obsession with car clubs but they now are offering a new service which might be a fun gift for the holidays. Their Drive Your Dream Package include several different pre-planned automotive tour packages which let you drive multiple exotic and luxury cars during the course of a single day. For $989 You can drive five cars including an Aston Martin V8 Vantage and a Ferrari F430. A good gift for two for the holidays might be the Couples Tour which includes 30 minute drives in a Rolls Royce Phantom and the Mercedes S 550 as well as dinner at a five-star restaurant for $849. Weekly guided tours in the Dallas area begin in December, expanding to Houston, San Antonio and Austin in January 2007.
This past weekend in Dallas, NorthPark Center unveiled its $200 million expansion to throngs of shoppers who came to take in the sights and leave with a bit less in the wallet. NorthPark Center is one of several upscale shopping venues in the DFW Metroplex, with this expansion however, it can be assured that it sits at the top of the luxury heap. What began as one of the nation's first indoor shopping malls, NorthPark has grown into a premier shopping destination in Dallas. The clean, mid-century modern design is soothing and highlights sculpture from the Nasher Sculpture Center placed throughout the wide arcades.
Find out what makes NorthPark Center the best shopping in Dallas after the jump.
Urban design is coming to Texas in the form
of Kessler Woods, a development of thirty homes located in Oak Cliff, four
miles southwest of Dallas. The contemporary gated development features designs inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright and
Richard Neutra.The entire development will be a monument to midcentury modern, a big difference from the rather bland
attempts at design that populate many developments. The development has access to the 12 Hill Nature Center and views
of the Dallas skyline. According to an article
in the Dallas Morning News this winter, all 11 homes in the first phase have been sold out. The houses sell for
between $495,000 to $2 million.
The Dallas art community is eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new venue for
the Dallas Opera. Located in the blosoming arts district, the Winspear Opera House will sit alongside the Morton
Meyerson Symphony Center, designed by I.M. Pei. The Winspear Opera house will not be lacking in celebrity architecture
factor, the design was submitted by the great Lord Foster. When the opera house is completed, along with the
neighboring Dee and Charles Wyly Theater, it will make the only contiguous block in the world with buildings designed
by 4 Pritzker Prize winning architects: Rem Koolhas, I.M. Pei, Renzo Piano, and Lord Foster.
The Winspear
Opera House will basically look like a red drum, surrounded by glass, with a pergola over it. I'm sure that it will be
more inspiring than my description can impart, especially at night, when the effect will be most exciting. Seating
2,220 patrons, the horshoe-shaped opera house will be acoustically tuned for operatic performances. Too bad that we
have to wait till 2009 to see the completed structure.
This past weekend in Dallas, 
