Houston Power Couple’s Epic Mansion Heads to Auction Next Month

John and Becca Thrash have been making news in Houston society for almost 30 years, and the many A-listers who they’ve lavishly entertained in their bespoke mansion include George H.W. Bush, Barack Obama, Tom Brady, George Clooney and Anna Wintour. The social couple now wants to downsize and their longtime estate, the site of many of their legendary parties, is set to be auctioned next month with a guide price of $19.5 million.

Chief Executive Officer of the Houston green energy company eCORP International, John Thrash and famed hostess Becca Cason Thrash met in 1995 at a party. At the time, John was in the process of building a humongous house on four separate lots in Houston’s tony Memorial neighborhood.

In accordance with the oft-cited saying that “everything is bigger in Texas,” Thrash transformed and vastly expanded an existing house, a five-thousand-square-foot structure originally built by prominent local architect Preston Bolton, known for midcentury-era Mexican hacienda-style homes, into a contemporary extravaganza almost four times the size.

The idea was a grandiose design fusion, taking the original residence and expanding it using a variety of elements from architectural maestros such as I.M. Pei, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. (Certainly, the glass box look of the Thrash mansion is a throwback to Mies’s much smaller Farnsworth House!) The result is a perfect party palace with numerous water features and high-quality materials such as granite, slate, and rift-sawn oak that pay homage to the natural world just beyond the glass walls.

The house boasts three distinct wings. A series of low-rise rooms in the front of the house includes bedrooms, bathrooms and a study, while the middle of the house offers the reception rooms, which include the several living rooms, a library, a dining room, and an indoor pool. (And yes, apparently guests do occasionally fall in the pool!) The back of the house is where the private two-story primary suite is located. In all, there are 18,113 square feet, three bedrooms and six bathrooms, plus four powder rooms, all set on 3.62 acres of land.

Texas Monthly described the new dwelling in 2002 as “a flat-roofed, granite-and-slate showplace with skylights, two-story windows, imposing oak-and-stainless-steel furniture, large marble tables engraved with quotations (‘The greatest dreams are realized by those who have the ability to dream greatly’), glass floors that had to be constantly cleaned, and a ‘pool room’ that contained not billiard tables but a 22- by 44-foot indoor swimming pool.”

Despite its grandeur, Becca Thrash is refreshingly down-to-earth about the house. When asked about her 2,000-square-foot professional-grade kitchen, Mrs. Thrash, quoted in the 2002 Texas Monthly article, said, “’I don’t know that much about it. John and I go out to eat almost every night.’ When someone else asked if she ever swam in the indoor pool, she said, ‘Oh, God, no, it’s too cold. I’ve never put my big toe in there.’”

Never previously offered for sale, the opulent estate includes a guesthouse evocatively called “The Treehouse,” and is set to be sold via Sotheby’s Concierge Auctions in cooperation with Jay Monroe of Martha Turner Sotheby’s International Realty.