Welcome to the 40th anniversary of the Historic Elgin House Tour!

If you are new to the Historic Elgin House Tour, welcome! Each year we have houses that will surprise you with their grandness, coziness, or quirks. These six turn-of-the-century and Victorian era homes have all three.

Our goal with the tour is to show how historic neighborhoods and an emphasis on preservation promote a vibrant community. We are lucky most of the homes on the tour are along parks and community gardens, giving us a unique public setting for these houses.

These six houses have witnessed a lot of changes in this neighborhood.  With a historic cemetery turned into a park and school, demolished buildings turned into a community garden the neighborhood is under constant change.

We also have a great walking tour of the neighborhood this year. The tour highlights houses that have been restored over the last 40 years; with money raised by this tour.   

It takes many volunteers to accomplish a successful tour and we are fortunate to now have several generations of people involved that have given their time & talent this year and over the last 40 years. Whether you have been volunteering for decades or days this tour doesn’t happen without all of us working together.

As always, the tour requires brave and willing homeowners whom we want to give tremendous thanks. Being a homeowner on the tour I can attest that this year’s owners have been busy working on projects. Some like me have many more projects ahead.

As you go on the tour you will see volunteers with name tags. Some are with the house tour; some are on the preservation commissions or city council. Please don’t shy away from them, they would love to hear from you.

Thank you for joining us as we continue to honor history and make our own on this 40th year of the Historic Elgin House Tour.

Regards,

Matt Martin
Historic Elgin House Tour Chair