HOUSTON

IT took some courage for Josef Helfenstein, the director of the Menil Collection, to build a house just 200 yards from the museum, which Renzo Piano designed. Philip Johnson’s Rothko Chapel is nearby, too, in this leafy, art-filled neighborhood.

But when Mr. Helfenstein and his wife, Dorothee Sauter Helfenstein, came across a lot in sight of the museum’s front door, the Swiss-born couple did not hesitate. “We never for one moment felt we were in some naïve architectural competition,” said Mr. Helfenstein, 54.

Their confidence stemmed from a meeting with Nonya Grenader, a professor at the Rice University school of architecture and a native Houstonian, whom they hired to design the house. “We loved her keen sense of Texas design history,” Mr. Helfenstein said.

The two-story home she created for them, which cost $495,000 to build, owes a debt to the traditional Southern dogtrot, a design with a covered outdoor hallway. The front of the house, an 1,800-square-foot volume with the living areas on the ground floor and two bedrooms, bathrooms and a work area on the second floor, is connected by an open breezeway to a 900-square-foot building behind with a studio and a bedroom suite. The two structures share the same roof.