Buffalo Bayou Park
— a slow brown river the city forgot to pave.
Not only on a wall.
Buffalo Bayou Park, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“A hundred and sixty acres of restored bayou between Shepherd Drive and Sabine Street, just west of downtown Houston. Cyclists on the south bank, runners on the north, kayakers on the water itself. At dusk the Waugh Drive bridge releases its colony of Mexican free-tailed bats — roughly 250,000 of them, in a ribbon that crosses the sky toward the skyline. The park's twin cisterns hold a still pool of rainwater beneath the city. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Buffalo Bayou Park is a 160-acre linear park along the south and north banks of Buffalo Bayou between Shepherd Drive and Sabine Street, just west of downtown Houston. The current park is the product of a $58 million redevelopment led by the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, the City of Houston, and Harris County Flood Control District, completed in 2015 to a master plan by SWA Group. It carries roughly 5.5 miles of hike-and-bike trail, the Lost Lake visitor area, the Water Works, and the Cistern beneath Sabine Street.
Buffalo Bayou is the slow brown river around which Houston was founded in 1836; the park stretch is tidal, dredged for flood capacity, and paddled year-round by kayakers putting in at Lost Lake or at Sabine Street. The Waugh Drive bridge over the bayou shelters a colony of roughly 250,000 Mexican free-tailed bats that emerge most evenings from March through November about 20 minutes before sunset, crossing the water in a long ribbon toward the city. A viewing platform on the south bank holds the crowd.
The park is open daily from dawn to dusk, with no entry fee. The Cistern, a 1926 underground drinking-water reservoir with 221 concrete columns and a 17-second echo, is open for guided and self-guided tours on a small ticketed schedule, Wednesday through Sunday. Bicycle and kayak rentals are run from the Lost Lake visitor center near Dunlavy Street, and the Buffalo Bayou Park Cistern is one of the few interior spaces in the park. The Waugh bat flight is free, lasts about 30 minutes, and best seen from the south-bank platform.
