The Gerald D. Hines Waterwall Park in Uptown Houston

Gerald Hines shaped Houston’s skyline and took his firm worldwide

ByDana Kowalczyk

Photo: Sitao Xiang, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Gerald Douglas Hines was born in Gary, Indiana, in 1925 and studied mechanical engineering at Purdue. He moved to Houston in 1948 to work as an engineer and began developing small office buildings on the side.

The buildings

Hines’s firm grew in the 1960s and 1970s. He developed One Shell Plaza in 1971, then one of the tallest buildings west of the Mississippi. He built the Galleria in 1970, which helped create the Uptown district.

His most influential building was Pennzoil Place, completed in 1976, designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee. Its two trapezoidal towers broke with the flat-topped boxes of modernism and drew national attention. Hines continued to hire well-known architects, including for Transco Tower, now Williams Tower, and Bank of America Center.

Going global

Hines believed good design paid off in rents and occupancy. His company expanded to other cities and then to Europe, Asia and Latin America. Today, Hines is one of the largest privately owned real estate firms in the world.

His son Jeffrey became president and later chief executive.

Legacy

Hines died in 2023 at age 98. The University of Houston’s Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design and the Waterwall Park in Uptown carry his name. His buildings remain defining features of the Houston skyline.

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