The Old Sixth Ward, one of Houston's most beloved historic neighborhoods, was settled in the mid-19th century on what was then the edge of the city. The principal developer was W.R. Baker, Houston mayor and president of the Houston & Texas Central Railway, and many of the neighborhood’s early residents were railroad workers who decorated their cottages with hand-cut gingerbread ornamentation.

Please note that this tour is sold out.

Glenwood Cemetery, established in 1871 on rolling, wooded land near Buffalo Bayou, is one of the most beautiful outdoor spaces in Houston. It is also the resting place of scores of people who built Houston into the city we know today — railroad executives, bankers, politicians and architects, among many others.

Few American architects have had the opportunity to design an entire city. In the early 1940s, Alden B. Dow joined their ranks when Dow Chemical expanded its Freeport plant, prompting the construction of a new town for plant employees: Lake Jackson. In addition to model home designs, Dow produced plans for schools, churches, a movie theater and commercial buildings. His city plan and modern building designs formed the basis for the area’s growth in the decades that followed.

A walk along Main Street in downtown Houston is a walk through the city's business development and its changing architectural tastes. Our 90-minute, docent-guided tour traces Main Street's role as the center of activity for much of Houston's history, visiting early businesses and skyscrapers, retail stores, banks and the sites of its movie palaces.

Enjoy the company of friends old and new, and celebrate Preservation Houston’s work over the past year, during our 2019 Membership Reception and Meeting on Tuesday evening, June 11, at The Parador, 2021 Binz in the Museum District. Admission is free for current Preservation Houston and Pier & Beam members and their guests.

In this lecture, University of Houston assistant architecture professor Michael Kubo will compare two cases of research, advocacy and preservation of the modern built heritage in U.S. cities: the Brutalist buildings that transformed Boston in the 1960s and 1970s, and the modernist urban revitalization efforts in Pittsburgh during the same period.

Celebrate Preservation Month by joining Houston preservationists for a special happy hour from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 28, at Public Services Wine & Whisky in the historic Cotton Exchange Building, 202 Travis Street.

Please note that this tour is fully booked. We cannot accept walk-ups on the day of the tour.

Historic Glenwood Cemetery is known for its beauty, but the stories of the people buried there are just as compelling — especially Glenwood's women, whose legacies range from the suffrage movement to the silver screen. This tour tells the stories of some of those fascinating women and their impacts locally and nationally. Among the featured subjects are Charlotte Allen, the wife of Houston co-founder Augustus Allen; suffragists Annette Finnigan and Florence Sterling; publisher and stateswoman Oveta Culp Hobby, who led the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II; and movie star Gene Tierney.

Avondale, a residential neighborhood in what is now the Montrose area, was part of the first wave of Houston’s southwestern suburban expansion in the early years of the 20th century. Fashionable residential development at the time was centered on Main Street, but new neighborhoods including Westmoreland, Courtlandt Place and Avondale were drawing upscale residents away from the old South End by 1910, beginning a trend toward the suburbs that would continue for decades.

Join Pier & Beam and Architecture Center Houston at Axelrad Beer Garden for a special screening of Eames: the Architect and the Painter, a film dedicated to the lives and work of husband-and-wife designers Charles and Ray Eames.

William Dupont, San Antonio Conservation Society Endowed Professor at The University of Texas at San Antonio, will describe the work of the U.S. Technical Team collaborating since 2005 with Cuban colleagues to preserve Ernest Hemingway's legacy in Cuba. Among his topics will be past restoration efforts at Hemingway’s house and ongoing issues related to cultural resource management.

If you're looking for something new under the midcentury sun, Victor Lundy is a real find — an important yet underappreciated figure in the history of American architecture. Trained in both the Beaux Arts and Bauhaus traditions, he built an impressive practice ranging from small-scale residential and commercial buildings to expressive religious buildings and two preeminent institutional works: the U.S. Tax Court Building in Washington, D.C. (now on the National Register of Historic Places), and the U.S. Embassy in Sri Lanka.

Market Square, one of the public squares laid out in the Allen brothers’ original plan of Houston, was home to the city market and City Hall from 1841 to 1939. During that time, the square became the center of Houston’s early commercial district. Although the neighborhood declined in the mid-20th century, preservation projects have brought new uses to its historic buildings and new life to Market Square itself.

After Rice Institute and Hermann Park opened in the early 1910s, Houston's South End became an increasingly desirable neighborhood in which to live and work — and it remains one today. This 90-minute, docent-guided walking tour explores the beautiful area between Main Street and Montrose Boulevard just north of Hermann Park, including the buildings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the charming neighborhoods of Chelsea Place, Cotswold Court and Colby Court; and the imposing churches of Main Street.

Please note that advance ticket purchase is required for this tour.

Glenwood Cemetery is known for its splendid Victorian monuments, but there’s a more modern side to the cemetery as well. This docent-guided walking tour explores some of the newer sections of Glenwood and the lives of some of the well-known 20th century Houstonians buried there, including businessmen George and Herman Brown; cotton magnate and statesman Will Clayton; Edgar Odell Lovett, Rice University’s first president; Astrodome builder Judge Roy Hofheinz; and longtime television anchor Ron Stone. Hear their stories and discover the fascinating art and architecture of 20th century Glenwood on this all-new tour.

The area now known as Midtown originally developed as farmland on the outskirts of Houston, then was transformed into the upscale South End residential district as the city expanded to the south around the turn of the 20th century. Over the years that followed, South End residents moved to newer suburban neighborhoods, and their grand homes were demolished to make way for office and retail buildings, apartments and parking lots. Our 90-minute, docent-guided walking tour will explore the neighborhood’s history, visiting some sites that are reminders of South End glamour and others that show how Midtown is transforming itself into a modern urban residential and cultural center.

Please note that advance ticket purchase is required for this tour.

Historic Glenwood Cemetery is known for its beauty, but the stories of the people buried there are just as compelling — especially Glenwood's women, whose legacies range from the suffrage movement to the silver screen. This tour tells the stories of some of those fascinating women and their impacts locally and nationally. Among the featured subjects are Charlotte Allen, the wife of Houston co-founder Augustus Allen; suffragists Annette Finnigan and Florence Sterling; publisher and stateswoman Oveta Culp Hobby, who led the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps during World War II; and movie star Gene Tierney.

Join us for a special program Tuesday evening, October 16, as historians and early PH members Minnette Boesel, Barrie Scardino Bradley, Betty Chapman and Stephen Fox explore those and other topics from Preservation Houston’s four decades in a panel discussion moderated by PH Programs Director Jim Parsons. The panelists’ memories and insights, paired with images from Preservation Houston’s archives, tell the story of how preservation in Houston has matured since the late 1970s.

Houstonians Toya and Reuben Levi organized the Green Book Project to document African-Americans’ experiences traveling across the U.S. under Jim Crow through photos, interviews and documentation of existing sites listed in the Green Book. The Levis will discuss the history and legacy of the Green Book, as well as some of the Houston locations listed in the guide through the years, in this illustrated lecture.

In Lost, Texas: Photographs of Forgotten Buildings, architect and architectural photographer Bronson Dorsey takes us on a tour of abandoned buildings in Texas that evoke the mystique of bygone days and shifting population patterns. With a skilled photographer’s eye, he captures the character of these buildings — most abandoned and in a state of decay, though a handful have been repurposed as museums, residences or other functional structures.

Please note that advance ticket purchase is required for this tour.

Glenwood Cemetery is known for its splendid Victorian monuments, but there’s a more modern side to the cemetery as well. This docent-guided walking tour explores some of the newer sections of Glenwood and the lives of some of the well-known 20th century Houstonians buried there, including businessmen George and Herman Brown; cotton magnate and statesman Will Clayton; Edgar Odell Lovett, Rice University’s first president; Astrodome builder Judge Roy Hofheinz; and longtime television anchor Ron Stone. Hear their stories and discover the fascinating art and architecture of 20th century Glenwood on this all-new tour.

Please note that advance ticket purchase is required for this tour.

This two-hour walking tour traces the changing tastes and the varied social and personal motivations reflected in some of Glenwood's outstanding monuments, which range from elaborate Victorian obelisks and angels to crisp, modern compositions. Along the way, docents will explain the symbolism and stories behind the monuments and will discuss the lives of Houstonians both famous and forgotten who commissioned them.

Allen's Landing is sometimes called "Houston's Plymouth Rock," and with good reason: It is the spot where the city's founders, Augustus and John Kirby Allen, set foot on the land that would become Houston. Allen's Landing became the original site of the Port of Houston in 1840 and for many years was the center of trade in the city. The site fell into decline through the 20th century, but is now finding new life as link in the system of parks being developed along Buffalo Bayou's banks.

The William A. Wilson Realty Co. began developing Woodland Heights in 1907 on 136 acres of land that was once part of John Austin's Mexican land grant. The neighborhood was one of Houston's first "streetcar suburbs" — a streetcar line ran from downtown along Houston Avenue to just outside the Woodland Heights gates, enabling working-class Houstonians to live in a lovely wooded setting and easily commute to their jobs.

In 1950, Greater Houston had just one freeway: the Gulf Freeway, the first sections of which were built immediately after World War II. Since then, more than 1,200 miles of freeways have been built in Houston and Harris County, and additional freeways are under construction. Highways have driven nearly every aspect of Houston’s postwar development, from the physical layout of the city to the political process that has transformed both the transportation network and the balance of power between the government and citizens.

When developer W.W. Baldwin laid out Westmoreland Place in 1902, its location — on the southwestern edge of what is now Midtown — was considered the very edge of the city. Baldwin patterned the neighborhood on the "private places" of St. Louis: small, gated developments with a central boulevard along which the grandest homes were built.

This tour is fully booked. Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate walk-ups on the day of the tour.

Glenwood Cemetery, established in 1871 on rolling, wooded land near Buffalo Bayou, is one of the most beautiful outdoor spaces in Houston. It is also the resting place of scores of people who built Houston into the city we know today — railroad executives, bankers, politicians and architects, among many others.

When landscape architects Hare & Hare drew up plans for Houston's civic center in the late 1920s, they envisioned a group of stylistically similar Spanish-influenced buildings arranged around a public square. But those plans were derailed by the Depression, and the city's governmental and cultural center ended up developing over the next 50 years in a variety of styles with few efforts at overall planning. Today, structures in the Civic Center and the adjacent Theater District reflect not only the evolution of Houston's municipal and cultural institutions, but also changing architectural tastes.