Please note that advance ticket purchase is required for this walking tour. Scroll down or click here to register.
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. However, 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 overall planning efforts. 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.
This 90-minute, docent-guided tour will visit architectural highlights of the neighborhood, including Ralph Adams Cram's Julia Ideson Building of the Houston Public Library; Joseph Finger's Houston City Hall; Tranquillity Park, built to commemorate the 1969 moon landing; and Ulrich Franzen's 1968 Alley Theatre. Along the way, the tour will discuss the changing styles and shifting civic priorities that helped shape this section of downtown Houston.
This is an exterior architecture tour only. The tour will not go inside any buildings. There are no public restrooms along the tour route.
About the tour
Admission is $10 per person for the general public ($7 for Preservation Houston members and students.) Children 11 years old and under are admitted free.
Advance ticket purchase is required. Reservations are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. We are not able to accommodate walk-ups the day of the tour. There are no refunds for tour reservations.
Registrants will receive parking and check-in information via e-mail.
Face masks are optional for all fully vaccinated individuals, including docents. We ask that tourgoers who are not fully vaccinated remain masked at all times during the tour, including at check in.
In the event of inclement weather that prevents the tour from being offered as planned, we will notify registrants as far in advance as possible about their options to attend a rescheduled tour or transfer their reservations to another Preservation Houston tour.
Reserve your tickets now
Do you have an Architecture Walks pass?
If you have joined Preservation Houston and received a pass for a free Architecture Walk, you may redeem the pass for admission to this tour. E-mail us and we'll be happy to help.
Passes are redeemable subject to ticket availability.
This program is made possible with funding from Humanities Texas and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the federal ARP Act.
Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.