It begins with a winding drive where towering oak and cedar meet the majesty of the hills … a little slice of heaven offering beauty and a relaxing atmosphere.
Whitetail, flocks of turkey, mockingbirds and the occasional armadillo …
there’s plenty to see on this windshield tour of Star Canyon Ranch, a piece of Central Texas paradise.
Just keep your eyes on the road, or you might miss the sharp right at the edge of the bluff overlooking crystal-clear Barton Creek, some 60 feet below, where kingfishers and heron search, watching for a careless sunfish or sunning frog.
Down the road winds toward its crossing as the new home comes into view.
Like the road that leads to it, there were twists and turns on the way to completion of Bill ’58 and Mary ’58 (Greer) Mitchells’ new home near Dripping Springs … but, like the drive, there is reward at the end.
“We wrote the first check to the architect in January 2001,” Bill said. “It has
been a significant project – more than I would have believed; it has been a good engineering project – that keeps me off the streets.”
The home, designed by Hobson Crow Architects of Austin, is a new addition
to the landscape, completed last April, but it works hard at being one with nature.
“We wanted to bring the outside in, and that is what we’ve achieved,” Bill said. “We picked up the stone here, except for the very large slabs which were brought in from Leuters, Texas.” The largest stone weighs six tons.
Like the land it shares, this home is grand. With about 12,500 square feet in
three buildings – a guest house, office and main house – and a total area under roof of 14,500 square feet, there is no mistaking that this is a home with presence.
The main house has a four-story stair tower wrapping around an elevator. The stair tower’s foundation is embedded deep in limestone bedrock and rises to a glass observation area offering a 360-degree panoramic view of the ranch. The main house entry is a thick-walled, top-lit, art gallery. It opens to
the main living space that looks out on a panorama of a 60-foot-high wooded bank of Barton Creek. There is a large expanse of glass “curtain wall.”
“The architect wanted the living room to elicit a ‘wow’ when people walked into the room,” Mary said.
Moving the house from concept to completion was the task of Rizzo
Construction Inc., an award-winning commercial general contracting firm in Austin.
Not only did the Mitchells want to bring the view into the home, but also the
rich textures and colors of the nature that surround it. “We made as much use of native materials as possible,” Bill said. Extensive use of Texas woods – mesquite, cedar and pecan – combined with the harvested stone creates warmth that embraces.
Texas tough and full of character, mesquite has become a popular wood for furniture and flooring. Native mesquite is richly beautiful, very stable, resistant to buckling or splitting, and can withstand heavy weight and moisture changes. Mesquite figures extensively in the Mitchell home, from stair railings and steps to flooring throughout, including a unique end-cut block pattern yielding a beautiful and exceptionally durable floor in the main room.
Light-colored pecan veneers on walls and columns contrast with the dark flooring, while hand-hewed cedar beams accent the limestone interior rockwork.
The couple searched for property for several years before buying the first part of the ranch. They have extended its reach a couple of times since, but, in selecting the site for the home, settled near one edge of the ranch.
“We wanted a south view for a south sun in the wintertime,” he said. “This was the only place that was really pretty and where we weren’t looking onto someone else’s property.”
One of many unique features of the home is its approach to water use. Rainwater is collected at the metal barn, and gravity feeds it to an 87,000-gallon-capacity water collection system. Inside the barn are six fiberglass holding tanks, each 12 feet in diameter and 12 feet tall, and fully integrated
with a filtration system. The system includes circulation pumps, ozone generators and filtration to the 10-micron level. A well on the property and a connection to city water serve as backups during dry seasons.
Getting the home finished has meant a lot of work, but the Mitchells have found some time to entertain. “We’ve had a few large parties,” Mary said. They recently hosted about 80 architects, builders and guests from the Friends of Architecture of the UT School of Architecture.
In 1993, Bill became vice chairman of Texas Instruments, a position he held until his retirement in December 1996. As a member of the office of the chairman and chief executive, he was directly involved with the company’s strategic redirection, new market development and global business activities in systems, software, and components. He began his career with TI as a
design engineer in 1961, steadily moving to positions of increasing responsibility through his business acumen.
After Mary graduated from Lamar with her bachelor of science degree in sociology, she worked for two years for the American Red Cross in Fort Worth, before becoming a full-time homemaker and community volunteer.
Many organizations have become the fortunate focus of her volunteer efforts.
“When Bill stopped working (for Texas Instruments), I inherited the position of executive assistant, and that takes a lot of time,” Mary said. “He doesn’t like to do too much computer stuff.”
“I don’t like to sit still very long,” Bill said. “I like to get out there and do it – I’ve got projects going here all the time.”
Whether he’s at work on the home or the ranch, or lending his experience to national corporations, Bill is constantly on the go.
As a trustee of the 18-member board of MITRE Corp., chaired by James Schlesinger, former secretary of defense, Bill travels frequently to Washington, D.C., and Bedford, Mass., to attending meetings. Other times, he and Mary will travel to California or other locations around the country where the advisors may visit military installations to view projects underway. MITRE Corp. manages three federally funded research and development centers and partners with government sponsors to address issues of national importance. These centers in aviation system development, defense and intelligence, and enterprise modernization conduct about $1
billion in business annually.
Bill also travels frequently to New York to serve on the board of Curtiss-Wright Corp., a company with leading-edge programs in motion control systems for aerospace, flowcontrol systems including critical zero-leak
valves for nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, the nuclear power generation industry as well as petrochemical and other processing industries. The company’s third business sector is advanced metal treatment, including laser
peening, which uses a high-energy laser to induce residual compressive stresses into metal surfaces to provide unprecedented resistance to fatigue, stress or corrosion failure for such critical items as jet-engine turbine blades. “Curtiss-Wright did about $1.2 billion in terms of sales last year,” Bill said.
His contributions also include service on the Austin Lyric Opera board, University of Texas Architectural School’s advisory committee, Lamar’s College of Engineering Advisory Board and the Lamar University Foundation.
One ongoing project is the extensive landscaping that surrounds the home.
Massive flagstone walks use local stone, and edgings set off careful plantings. Making the mammoth task possible are Bill’s skid steer, tractor, dump truck and electric air hammer – the only way to go deep in the shallow soiled hill country.
The couple’s decision to install a geothermal system for heating and cooling
was motivated as much by atmosphere as potential energy savings.
The two “wanted no outside noise” to compete with the sounds of nature when on the veranda in the evening, or enjoying a stroll around the grounds. “When we go out at night, we have no compressor noise,” Bill said. “And, for a house this size, we would have horrible noise and some pretty
big electric bills.”
The system employs 33 holes (22 for the main house; 11 holes for the office and guest house) bored down 250 feet into the rock in which water circulates in pipes reaching a constant 69 degrees. For cooling or heating, small heat pumps in the basement of the home bring the temperature up or down the desired amount.
To further the energy savings, Bill is considering installation of solar as well as small wind turbines to generate electricity for the home. He likes the idea of possibly being able to operate off of the electrical grid.
“We’re finally feeling that we’ve passed the major hurdles,” Bill said. “We’ve been working for months on this landscaping.”
Helping the couple with the landscape design is Ciel Williams, who holds a master’s degree from Harvard in landscape architecture. His planter’s palette includes native plants such as mountain laurel and Nolina Texana, as well as scores of more commonly used landscaping plants. “He loves working
with plants and is very creative,” Mary said.
The Mitchells’ previous home was xeriscaped – landscaping that conserves
water and protects the environment – and while most of the plants in the new landscape are also low-water-use plants, “we realized that, coming from Beaumont, we missed grass,” Bill said. They have planted plenty of grass this time and the rain-collection strategy to sustain it. The largest area
serves as a backdrop for several bronze sculptures by renowned sculptor Charles Umlauf, whose productive career included 40 years on faculty in the art department of the University of Texas.
More than grass reminds the couple of their Beaumont roots. Throughout their home are beautiful works by John Alexander and his teacher, Lamar Distinguished Professor Emeritus Jerry Newman, as well as Southeast Texas artist David Cargill. The couple’s penchant for collecting art began with two small pieces purchased on campus while they were students at Lamar.
A 1968 Lamar graduate, Alexander went on to a stellar career as an internationally renowned artist. The flora and fauna of Southeast Texas are reflected in much of his work as he interprets the region from his studios
in the Soho area of Manhattan and at his home in Amagansett on Long Island. These works bring a splash of color and Southeast Texas to the Mitchell home.
Lamar alumni should also recognize the name of Beaumont’s Cargill as he was the sculptor of the imposing bust of Mirabeau B. Lamar in the campus Quadrangle. Cargill has been an integral part of the Southeast Texas art community for more than 50 years, and several of his smaller works find prominent display in the Mitchell home.
And, as Bill and Mary Mitchell work steadily on completing the grounds, they look forward to the Austin Lyric Opera Guild garden party set in May when their guests will share a little bit of quiet paradise by Barton Creek.
