Hill Country Houses ─ Inspired Living in a Legendary Texas Landscape

Bounded by Austin and San Antonio, Texas Hill Country is celebrated for its frontier history and natural beauty. Architects and interior designers build contemporary houses using local materials and drawing on the area’s diverse heritage—Spanish Colonial missions and Mexican-style haciendas, French pioneers’ log cabins, German stonework, and the legacy of the “new regionalism” espoused by O’Neil Ford in the 1930s—to create inspired residences that respect tradition and allow their owners to enjoy expansive rural surroundings.

This volume presents nineteen of the area’s most remarkable private houses, with lush photography to provide a glimpse of how life in Central Texas is unique—from restored Victorian houses in bohemian Southtown, to a glass-walled ranch in Boerne canopied by oak trees; from floating stairs and sustainable systems to the casual elegance of country antiques, screen porches, and longleaf pine floors.

The rolling hills, spring-fed creeks, rivers, timber forests, and fertile grass-covered prairies of Hill Country—along with their abundance of natural materials such as limestone, cedar, local pecan, mesquite, oak, and cypress—inspire architects and interior designers to create beautiful modern spaces. They draw from the strong vernacular tradition of classic farmhouses that once dotted the land, and the building techniques that have been handed down through generations. The architecture and interiors featured here in beautiful full-color photography celebrate the wonderful particularities of this singular place.

Cyndy Severson is a fifth-generation Texan. She holds degrees in interior design and art history from the University of Texas at Austin, and for the past thirty-five years she has collaborated with architects as an interior designer specializing in residential and hospitality projects. Her passion for regional design and historical architecture has resulted in numerous awards from the AIA as well as various historical societies. She is also a seasoned photo stylist and set designer who has worked in print and film. Severson has been writing articles on architecture, design, travel and lifestyle since the late 1970s, and has contributed toTexas Monthly Magazine, Domain, Texas Homes, D Magazine,Texas Architect, and the Dallas Morning News. She divides her time between Texas and her home in Mexico, where she lives with an architect and four dogs.