Homes Tour History

The Historic Hyde Park Homes Tour, a long and esteemed tradition that showcases the beautiful homes that characterize Austin’s first streetcar subdivision, dates from the same period as the founding of the neighborhood association and the beginning of efforts to restore Hyde Park to its original glory.

The first tour, on a hot summer day sometime between 1975 and 1977, led tourists past but not into a number of Hyde Park’s classic homes, while Dorothy Richter provided a jug of ice water to cool the crowd. Janice Linder, a graduate student who rented an apartment on Speedway, and Fran Norman, a boarder at Rutledge House on Guadalupe, organized the first tour. Janice had already shown her commitment to Hyde Park by organizing efforts to save the Oliphant House at Avenue C and 39th Street from demolition, an effort that led to the founding of the neighborhood association.

From that seed grew a tradition that has lasted over 50 years. On the third tour, in 1979, visitors viewed the insides as well as the outsides of the houses. With the exception of 2008 and 2016, each year Hyde Park has presented six or more houses for the public to view. Most have been restored and renovated older homes, but a few have been recent additions to the neighborhood. Likewise, most have been within the boundaries of Hyde Park, but a few – for example, Inshallah and the Perry Mansion – have been in adjoining neighborhoods. All but four of Hyde Park’s historic landmark homes have been on the tour, and some of them have opened their doors to the public on multiple occasions, notably, the Kopperl House, the Page-Gilbert House, the Covert House, the Bell-Smith House, the Woodburn House, the Shipe House, and the Oliphant House. You can see some of these homes on this site’s Historic Landmarks page.

In 1986, the tour celebrated its tenth anniversary, and in 2001, its twenty-fifth. The 2017 tour was celebrated as its fortieth anniversary tour. Those of you with mathematical turns of mind will notice that the numbers don’t add up. The tour began in 1977 and missed two years along the way; that would make the 2018 tour the fortieth anniversary, not the 2017 tour! Apparently, numbering went astray in 2006, when the thirtieth annual tour was mistakenly labeled the thirty-first. Ah, well, organizational memory is as subject to error as human memory!

Enjoy your tour through these booklets. They present the best side of Hyde Park – its history, its architecture, and its dedicated corps of preservation-minded neighbors.