Advance ticket purchase is required for this tour.
Before it was Midtown, the area south of downtown was Houston’s fashionable South End. At the turn of the 20th century, the city’s growth transformed farmland into a residential neighborhood where prominent Houstonians built grand homes along tree-lined streets.
Join Preservation Houston at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 10, for a 90-minute, docent-guided walk through Midtown. We’ll trace the neighborhood’s evolution, look for reminders of its South End past and explore the architecture that reflects its continuing transformation.
As Houston expanded, many South End residents moved to newer neighborhoods farther from downtown. Their homes gradually gave way to offices, shops, apartments and parking lots. A handful of houses remain, along with institutions that once served the neighborhood, including Trinity Episcopal Church, the former South End Junior High School and Congregation Beth Israel’s 1925 temple, now Houston Community College’s Heinen Theatre.
Today these landmarks stand side by side with early 20th-century offices and apartments, remnants of Main Street’s old retail strip and newer additions such as MATCH, the Midtown Arts & Theater Center Houston. Together, these buildings reveal how Houstonians have lived, worked, shopped and gathered here over more than a century. Each new chapter has left its mark, creating a neighborhood where traces of the old South End share the streets with a very different Midtown.
Things to remember
This is an exterior architecture tour. We will not go inside any buildings.
There are no public restrooms along the route.
Registration and pricing
Admission is $15 for the general public and $10 for Preservation Houston members and students. Children 11 and under are admitted free.
Advance tickets are required and available on a first-come, first-served basis. We cannot accommodate walk-ups on the day of the tour. Tickets are nonrefundable.
About the tour
We’ll email parking and check-in details to registrants. Check-in begins at 1:30 p.m., and groups depart as they form. The last group will begin shortly after 2 p.m.
If inclement weather prevents us from offering the tour as planned, we’ll contact registrants as far in advance as possible with options to attend a rescheduled tour or transfer their reservations to another Preservation Houston tour.
Have an Architecture Walks pass?
If you received a pass for a free Architecture Walk when you joined Preservation Houston, you may redeem it for this tour. Email tours@preservationhouston.org, and we’ll be happy to help.
Passes are redeemable subject to ticket availability.