House of the American dream
Natasha and Michael Bleyzers’ lives changed when they arrived inHouston
“Really?” I kept asking as Michael and Natasha Bleyzer showed me their brand new house.
And: “Do you mean that literally?” Almost always, the answer was yes.
Yes, Michael really does watch different channels at the same time on all nine of the iPad- controlled television screens arrayed in a grid the house’s entryway. Yes, the mirror in the master bathroom really does convert into a giant TV screen. Yes, in the dogs’ little retreat room, the animals really do have a privacy switch that they can operate themselves, turning the glass in their window opaque if they’d rather not look at guests. ( Iwanted to see that. But the dogs, like much of the furniture, still hadn’t arrived.)
Yes, the Bleyzers’ architects told me, the steel- and-concrete house really is built atop a Buffalo Bayou floodplain, designed so that in a flood, water will collect beneath the house. Yes, those are cantilevers atop cantilevers; it’s the most structurally complex house that Stern and Bucek Architects has ever designed. Yes, it’s heated and cooled with super- green geothermal pumps. And yes, those louvers are moving by themselves to block the evening sun.
But the hardest thing to believe I could confirm with my own eyes. When you list its features, the 15,000- squarefoot house sounds like too, too much, a place that’s too big with too much going on, a high- tech Graceland.
But in hard- to- believe reality, it is beautiful.
Muscle and strut
Michael Bleyzer, all muscle and strut, looks like an aging rock star who spends his days in the gym. His white hair flows around his shoulders, but his beard is neatly trimmed; he doesn’t tuck his shirt into his jeans. Iwould not have guessed that he is a former student of engineering and quantum physics; or a former high- ranking executive at Exxon or Ernst & Young. But Iwasn’t surprised to hear that his private- equity fund, Sigma Bleyzer, manages more than a billion dollars of investments, most of them in former Soviet bloc countries.
Natasha is far lower- key. She let Michael do most of the talking, breaking in now and then with a sly joke. Michael was the one who drove the house’s extraordinary electronics system, demanding that iPads and iPods control almost everything; even from a Sigma Bleyzer branch office in Eastern Europe, he can check the house’s lighting and security, and the precise temperature of the wine room. But Natasha, also
trained as an engineer, insisted on having regular light switches aswell as i- controls. She likes practical, simple backups.
Why didyouwant such a modern house? I asked her aswewalked through a concrete passageway. I understoodwhyMichael would settle for nothing less than the sleekest, the newest, the most cuttingedge. ButNatasha seemed as pleased as he did.
“Because there is such freedom in modern design,” she said. “You can do anything. And to us, coming from wherewe did, that’s very important.”
Coming fromwhere youdid? I asked.
“Growing up in a place with an outdoor toilet,” Michael interjected.
And I had to ask again: Do youmean that literally?
You know why
We sat downwith glasses of wine in the living room, with its extraordinary glass- wall viewof the Bleyzers’ backyard: a tiny oxbowlake off Buffalo Bayou. Lush with cypresses, the place looks like a misplaced bit of Louisiana swamp. It’s startling to remember that you’re at the end of a cul- de- sac off busyMemorial.
With a remote control, Michael lit a fire in the fireplace. Aflat screen on thewall silently reported the markets’ gyrations. And the Bleyzers began to tell their story.
They both grewup in Kharkiv, the secondlargest city inUkraine, a center of science and technology—“the LosAlamos of our country,” Michael said. But life under the Sovietswas hardly cuttingedge. Natasha’s family lived in an apartment block in the ColdMountain neighborhood; there, three families shared an outdoor bathroom, little more than a hole in the ground. The outhouse had rats in the summer and ice in the winter. “Disgusting,” she said.
Michael grewup across town, in a similar neighborhood. In college, they both studied engineering, and Michael, the top student at Kharkiv’s top school,
“Because there is such freedom in modern design. You can do anything. And to us, coming fromwhere we did, that’s very important.” Natasha Bleyzer on why she and husbandMichael wanted such a modern house
expected to win a plum job. But shortly before graduation, the dean took him aside and told him that of the 100 jobs available for the 100 new graduates, only 17 of the least desirablewould be open to him. Why? Michael asked. You knowwhy, the dean said.
The dean did not say: Because you are a Jew.
SoMichael took an engineering job in land reclamation, a field he knewlittle about, in a remote outpost in the Turkmenistan desert. At night, to sleep in the heat, he andNatashawould soak their sheets inwater, then wrap themselves in them. When the sheets dried— usually after two hours, three on a good night— they’d get up to soak them again.
Michael researched a crop- irrigation system that the Israelis used in similar, salt- plagued desert land, and he built a room- size demonstration project to prove itwouldwork. To his boss, the system seemed like science fiction: a bad thing, in the ambitionless SovietUnion. Michaelwas fired on the spot.
Next, heworked for a company that ginned cotton, separating the seeds from fibers. He discovered a knack for lobbying theMoscow authorities, ensuring that the company’s top management got raises. For awhile, he thrived.
But one day, the company’s KGB agent calledMichael into his office. I amwatching you, the agent said. Because you are a Jew.
Michaelwent home and toldNatasha: We have to leave this country.
But for three years, the Soviet authorities refused to grant them permission to leave.
Such a country
The Bleyzers arrived in Houston in 1978, bringing nothing more than their little daughter, their suitcases and the $ 2,500 debt they’d incurred to buy plane tickets. Jewish charities set them up in an apartment. The apartment came with toothbrushes, Natasha recallswonderingly, and therewas food in the refrigerator. She thought: What a country.
For a number ofweeks, in that apartment, Michael honed his English by watching TV. When he believed himself ready towork in the language, he made an appointment with the resettlement agency, where a social worker explained American concepts such as classified ads, interviews and résumés. The socialworker advised Michael to be persistent, saying that findingwork wasn’t easy. But on his very first interview, Michael landed a job with Litton Corp. He didn’t like the “assistant engineer” title, but the salary, $ 11,500 a year, seemed a king’s ransom. He agreed to start after the holidays.
With time on his hands, Michael called a contact a resettlementworker in Rome had given him. The man, an Exxon executive, invited the Bleyzers to a party at his house. They weren’t surewhat an American partywas. And they’d never before been inside a single- family home.
In the SovietUnion, socializing meant sitting at a long table for hours, drinking straight vodka and eating graymeat. Theywere surprised to find themselves first standing up, drinking cocktails and mingling. Theywere even more surprisedwhen double doorswere opened to a ballroom, full of round tables for eight.
Such a house, they thought. Such a country.
Michael sat next to yet another Exxon executive, who invited him to visit the refinerywhere he worked. AndMichael, with time on his hands, took him up on the offer.
On the appointed day, a refinery personneldepartment employee met Michaelwith an itinerary. Michael, assuming that thiswas howAmericans handled visits, went blithely from office to office, answering questions about his education and previous employment. He toured the refinery, admiring its computers and systems, so superior to those at his old jobs. At lunch, the Exxon executives took him out for steak. The filet mignon was pink in the center; Michael had never eaten pink meat before. Itwas delicious.
At the end of the day, the personnel employee toldMichael, we’ll be in touch. Michael asked: Why? The personnel employee told him: To let you knowwhether you have the job.
Michael said, I don’t need a job. I already have a job.
The personnel employee said, Howmuch are they paying you? An hour later, he came back with a far better offer. And, more important to Michael, a better title: “Engineer.”
In this newcountry, anythingwas possible.
The dreams
“It’s the house of the American dream,” said architect David Bucek, on the couch in the living room. And it’s an architect’s dream, too, a once- in- a- lifetime project for their firm. Such a site; such clients; such ambition.
The main guest room is not just a guest room. Bucek thinks of it as the Room for theUkrainian Ambassador. (“Literally?” I asked. “Literally,” Bucek said.) The invisible- edge swimming pool, architect Bill Stern told me, is deep enough thatMichael can practice his scuba technique. The structural complexity, made possible by the newage of computer design, fell to the firm’s junior partner, DanielHall. Cantilevers on top of cantilevers, Bucek saidwonderingly: It’s something only a young architectwould attempt.
The part that surprised me most, though, was Michael’s gym. The size of a small house, it’s tall enough to accommodate the gymnastics rings that hang from the ceiling, and it’s stuffed with specializedworkout gizmos thatMichael uses to train in gymnastics and acrobatics. Outdoors, there’s a trampoline sunk into the ground, so that its bouncing surface is even with the grass.
“When did you take up gymnastics?” I asked Michael.
Ten years ago, he said. Althoughweight- lifting and cardio kept him “ripped,” when he turned 50, he realized that he couldn’t touch his toes. He stopped liftingweights, and with a coach from Eastern Europe, he began studying acrobatics. Now he can do a back flip. And he is still improving.
I asked: “Don’t gymnasts usually begin the sportwhen they’re 7?”
He smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Andwhen they are 17, they win the Olympics. I began 10 years ago. In seven years, Iwill win the Olympics.”
I did not askwhether he really, literally meant that. In that extraordinary house, I could believe anything.