Preservation Sacramento
48th Annual Historic Home Tour
Our next Historic Home Tour is Sunday, September 22, 2024. Tickets are on sale now.
This year’s tour will take place in the Boulevard Park neighborhood, including the Boulevard Park Historic District. Join our email list or follow us on social media for updates and notifications about the tour.
The Preservation Sacramento Annual Home Tour is the largest and longest running home tour in Sacramento. One day a year, volunteers open their homes and businesses to members and friends of Preservation Sacramento. With an emphasis on historic buildings, the tour also features quality infill projects that have become important parts of Sacramento’s urban fabric.
Click through the slideshow below to enjoy some photos from the 2023 Historic Home Tour.
About the homes featured on the Tour:
2022 Historic Home Tour - Poverty Ridge
The 2022 Historic Home Tour was a hybrid tour with three in-person tours in the Poverty Ridge neighborhood and three virtual tours. Click through to see photo highlights from the in-person tour.
About the homes featured on the Tour:
2021 Historic Home Tour - Virtual
Preservation Sacramento’s 2021 Historic Home tour was a virtual tour, showcasing unique and historic homes throughout the City of Sacramento. Unlike previous years, the tour was not tied to a specific neighborhood and we selected a series of homes from different neighborhoods and eras. Sites throughout the city, impossible to visit using our more traditional tour format, were open to explore. The tour was held twice, on October 24 and November 7, with early and late shows. Homes included a Craftsman bungalow (the only historic landmark building in Natomas), a Mid-century Modern home in Sacramento’s only Eichler neighborhood, a Tudor Revival home in Curtis Park listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and a 1960s concrete block auto garage converted into a unique home and art gallery.
2019 Historic Home Tour - Woodlake
The 44th Preservation Sacramento Historic Home Tour in 2019 offered an inside look at charming homes of the Woodlake neighborhood. Noted for its Tudor Revival cottages and mature trees, Woodlake is tucked between Highway 160 and Arden Way. North Sacramento Land Company founder Carl Johnston, an unabashed Anglophile, developed Woodlake in the 1920s. Described by Sacramento Magazine as “one of the best kept secrets of local real estate,” the Woodlake neighborhood is five minutes from the Capitol and 15 minutes from the airport. This was the first ever home tour of the Woodlake neighborhood, but hopefully not the last!
2018 Historic Home Tour - Capital Mansions
The 2018 Preservation Sacramento Historic Home Tour was held on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2018 in the Capitol Mansions Historic District neighborhood. Named for its large, stately structures, Capital Mansion Historic District is bounded by 22nd and 27th streets, Kayak Alley (between Capitol Avenue and L Street), and Matsui Alley (between Capitol Avenue and N Street). This historic district includes Colonial Revival, Queen Anne, Prairie Bungalow, and Classical Four-Square styles of architecture.
This year’s tour showcases six distinctive, stately homes. Tour-goers can see intricate woodworking, built-in cabinets, light fixtures with gas lights on top and electric lights on the bottom, grand staircases, restored wood paneling, curved glass windows, high ceilings, classy renovated kitchens, and spacious front porches. While all the homes had been originally built as single-family residences, five had commercial stints—two boarding houses, two bed and breakfast establishments, and an office building. With a lot of painstaking work and talented craftsmen, the homes have been rescued and restored to family residences.
2017 Historic Home Tour - Alkali Flat
The 2017 Preservation Sacramento Historic Home Tour was held on September 17, 2017 in the Alkali Flat neighborhood, which contains the City of Sacramento’s first residential historic district to be listed on the National Register of Historic Places (1984). Alkali Flat is bounded by the Southern Pacific railroad tracks, 7th, I, and 12th streets. The district remains a highly cohesive collection of 19th century residential buildings. Alkali Flat’s earliest and most important surviving buildings are contained within the historic district, but there are many significant buildings and recently competed infill projects surrounding the district.
Alkali Flat is one of Sacramento’s oldest residential neighborhoods. The area was once a lake bed which would dry up in the summer and result in alkali deposits on the surface. Located immediately north of the central business district, the neighborhood proved a logical place for both large estates for the business owners, politicians, and industry leaders to build spacious estates. In addition to the large homes, the neighborhood's proximity to the railyard and other industry was also a logical place for workers cottages and more modest dwellings.
2016 Historic Home Tour - Elmhurst
The 41st Annual Historic Home Tour in 2016 showcased the Elmhurst neighborhood with its architectural gems, such as the Julia Morgan House Event and Conference Center, designed by renowned female architect Julia Morgan. The house is currently owned by University Enterprises, Inc., a non-profit auxiliary organization of Sacramento State.
Known for its canopy of large elm, ash and oak trees, this shady residential neighborhood (bounded by Highway 50, Stockton Boulevard, V Street, 2nd Avenue, and 59th Street) includes Mediterranean, Tudor Revival, Craftsman, and Victorian style architecture. The Elmhurst neighborhood has never before been the site of a Sacramento home tour.
Julia Morgan, the first woman licensed to practice architecture in California, is considered America’s greatest female architect. Best known as the designer of the world-renowned Hearst Castle, Julia Morgan also designed some West Coast public buildings and distinguished homes, such as the Mediterranean mansion that tour-goers will be able to access.
