Houdini House

“It’s an ultimate entertaining house. Big open rooms, a modern feel — and you walk out the elevator, down the stairs, and your boat is right there.“
— Matt Hollaway

 

Houdini House was built and sold before construction was complete. The site is the kind of lot most builders would have walked away from — a narrow, peculiar footprint on the river side of Horseshoe Bay where the water comes all the way in beneath the structure. Rather than fight it, the team leaned in: the boat parks underneath the house, protected from sun and wind, and the home rises three stories above on engineered structural steel.

Architecturally, Houdini House is modern but softened — a mix of stone, stucco, and metal siding with a wood-grain finish. Large windows, high ceilings, and a long sequence of glass exposures take advantage of the river views. A three-stage elevator connects the levels; a bunk room handles large family gatherings; and the kitchen and a portion of the master bath are designed in the round, two of the home’s more unusual interior moves.

Outside, the home holds the deepest boat channel to the boat house of any lot on this stretch of the river. The pool sits out on a small peninsula extension toward the water, so swimmers feel as if they’re in the lake itself. The garage doubles as a covered outdoor entertaining extension — opened up, it adds a couple thousand square feet of shaded, lake-adjacent space.

Construction required a different posture than a standard custom build. The house carried significant structural steel because of its openness and the way it suspends over the water, and the rear of the building rises more than forty feet above the water — high enough that the team had to rig scaffolds, work from barges, and at one point pull a barge directly underneath the structure to give crews a stable working platform at elevation.

The architecture was developed to make the most of the constrained lot. The driveway and sidewalk on the right side were cut down the hill and run underneath the house to reach the garage and outdoor entertaining area, while the left side of the lot remains elevated. That move maximized usable yard, minimized landscape to keep maintenance light on a second home, and gave the front entry the feel of a resort gallery walk.

The Hollaway team made the design calls themselves. The home found its buyer before the final punch list — a quiet endorsement of the work.

Houdini House sold prior to completion, which is the kind of market recognition that doesn’t come with a trophy but tells the story plainly. The home’s distinctive lot, structural-steel construction over the water, and resort-style entry sequence make it one of the more talked-about properties on this stretch of Lake LBJ.