beautiful bayou city buildings

Houston building towers as the most beautiful in Texas

Bank of America center downtown Houston skyline

Voters named the Bank of America center the most beautiful building in Texas.

Photo courtesy of Bank of America Tower

For those keeping score, Houston has again topped a best-of list. A local building has towered over others in Texas as the most beautiful in the state, according to a new survey.

Readers of Business Insider were asked to name the one “architectural masterpiece” they most admire in their state. National responses ranged from a cliffside church to a famous lighthouse.

In Texas, the Bank of America Center, the iconic, instantly recognizable centerpiece that defines downtown Houston’s skyline, earned top marks as the most beautiful building in Texas. The Bank of America Center is a 56-story, 1.5 million-square-foot office tower with an adjacent 12-story (125-foot-high) banking hall. The neo-Gothic building, completed in 1983 and designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee, shines in the Houston sky with its red granite and reflective glass.

Fittingly, Bank of America Center’s towering neighbor, Pennzoil Place, also scored an honorable mention, as did Rice University’s picturesque, collegiate classic, Lovett Hall.

Completed in 1975, Pennzoil Place was dubbed the "Building of the Decade" in 1975 by New York Times architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable due to its dramatic sculptural silhouette. The building is also considered significant in architectural circles for breaking the modernist glass box made popular by followers of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and for introducing the era of postmodernism.

Lovett Hall, the Rice administration building lauded for its medieval Byzantine sculptural decoration and built in 1912, has been described as "what a Houston-style architecture might look like" by local expert Stephen Fox. The Houston-centric structure was built with brick made from clay excavated from Buffalo Bayou and trimmed with pink Texas granite.

Statewide, Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum also garnered major kudos. The silvery structure, designed by architect Louis I. Kahn and completed in 1972, is a favorite for its striking vaults and skylights, and is widely recognized as one of the most significant works of U.S. architecture in recent times.

lists high-rises rankings downtown city-news-roundup

H-Town rising

Houston leaps back into top 50 'World's Best Cities' list for 2025

Photo by Adrian Newell on Unsplash

Houston made a big leap back into the top 50, ranking No. 40, after previously plummeting into No. 72 last year.

Lively Houston has regained its rightful place among the top 50 best cities in the world, according to a prestigious new report by Resonance Consultancy.

The Canada-based real estate and tourism marketing advisors ranked Houston the 40th best city worldwide for 2025 in its annual "World's Best Cities" list.

The report quantifies the relative qualities of livability, "lovability," and prosperity for the world's top 100 cities with metropolitan populations of 1 million or more. New to the 10th anniversary edition, Resonance partnered with global market researchers Ipsos to include perception-based data into the rankings, surveying over 22,000 people in 30 countries worldwide to determine "the most desirable places to visit, live or work."

Houston made a major rebound after plummeting to No. 73 in last year's report. In 2022, Houston ranked No. 42.

Resonance refers to its previous "World's Best Cities" reports and its 2024 "America's Best Cities" list – which ranked Houston in the top 10 – when explaining the Bayou City's successes. The report praised Houston's vast cultural diversity and placed a great focus on its economic prosperity, even going so far as to suggest Houston residents make more money "and can sock more away."

"...[W]here America’s fourth-largest city truly takes off is in its economic heft and wealth, ranking No. 9 globally for GDP per Capita and No. 14 for Fortune 500 companies in town," the report said. "All that rolls up into an overall Prosperity index ranking of No. 36, which is even more impressive given the No. 14-ranked Price-to Income Ratio [of the city]."

Elsewhere in Texas, Austin and Dallas also earned spots on the World's Best Cities list for 2025, but only one made a similar rebound from the previous year's rankings. Dallas moved up from No. 66 in last year's report to its current rank as No. 55. Meanwhile, Austin took its first tumble out of the 43rd spot (which it had occupied for two years straight) and now ranks No. 53.

London held onto its crown as the No. 1 best city in the world for 2025, followed by New York (No. 2), Paris (No. 3), Tokyo (No. 4), and Singapore (No. 5).