It's Almost House Tour Time
Birds chirping, daffodils budding…home and garden tours, on the horizon! Nine house and garden tours have been scheduled for the coming months. First up is the Fort Greene House Tour, which’ll take place on Sunday, May 4th; the following weekend the Brooklyn Heights House Tour will happen, followed by the Park Slope Civic Council House…
Birds chirping, daffodils budding…home and garden tours, on the horizon! Nine house and garden tours have been scheduled for the coming months. First up is the Fort Greene House Tour, which’ll take place on Sunday, May 4th; the following weekend the Brooklyn Heights House Tour will happen, followed by the Park Slope Civic Council House Tour on May 18th. After that, there are tours scheduled through the beginning of fall for Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Boerum Hill, Victorian Flatbush, Crown Heights North, and Bed-Stuy. A full listing with info on which organizations to contact for more info is on the jump.
I didn’t care about house tours when I was a renter. When I bought my brownstone apartment, I started going to them to get ideas for things to do to it (like built-ins, etc.) I blame the housetours for feeding my addiction to sites such as this one, and my desire to buy and renovate a house next. (Without the tours, I’d probably just decide that I could never afford it, and spend my time on other pursuits.) Oh well, I guess there are worse things to be addicted to – perhaps it is just a function of getting older, and not the fault of the beautiful homes I’ve seen on various house tours.
The tours don’t consist solely of showpiece Architectural Digest types of places. There are houses that have home offices, or in-home daycare rooms, or double kitchens for kosher families, or have been made wheelchair accessible, or show creative solutions to adapting 120-year-old houses to contemporary life.
And listening to the owners’ renovation stories is always fun.
There’s plenty of real estate porn if that’s what you’re looking for, but that’s not the only thing the tours offer.
The house and neighborhood garden tours are amazing! Hats off to the bold owners and organizers.
If you are interested in brownstones or decorating them, go on the house tours. Some of the houses are fabulous, often very personal visions that seem to me much more interesting than a house done by a designer. Not every house of course but usually 2 or 3 on a tour. If you are re-doing a house you will get great ideas. I cannot recommend them highly enough. Just wear comfortable shoes, start early, and maybe exercise your legs a little beforehand. Also 5:34 is exactly right, that’s how they started.
I admire the homeowners on all of the tours, who are far from ostentatious, but allow us to traipse through their homes commenting on their decor and renovation choices. In addition, these tours take a lot of work from dedicated volunteers. I live in Victorian Flatbush but I am far too chicken to put my home on the tour. The money raised, less the operating costs, goes back to specific community organizations. In the case of the Victorian Flatbush tour organizations like the Flatbush Development Corporation (FDC),a non-profit that does great work in Flatbush get a needed financial boost. Much of the work done by FDC involves tenant advocacy, immigration advocacy, GED and similar programs which don’t necessarily directly benefit the demographic of people who own the grand Victorian homes or condos and coops in Victorian Flatbush.
I care about the Victorian Flatbush house tour, as that seems to be “the big one” of the season. I can only make time for so many…
It’s not showing off, only a very negative person would view it that way. It’s a very helpful thing to the community. It increases awareness of preservation. It helps educate and inspire people who are undergoing renovations or considering doing so in the future. Many times you can ask the homeowner who their designer and contractor are so by the end of the tour you have a rolodex of people to call. Plus who protests spending a nice day with nice people looking at pretty things?
Fjorder,
AFAIK Prospect Heights is every other year. The same goes for Ft. Greene and Clinton Hill (which alternate) and Boerum Hill.
3:03,
I’ve had my house on the PLG HT four times since 1974, so I guess I must be REALLY “weird and ostentatious” although I look at it as something I do for my neighborhood. The time before last (perhaps 15 years ago) I was handling publicity and had a phone call from a Newsday reporter who wanted to do a story about a house on that year’s tour. It was February and, since we had NO houses lined up yet, I said “my house is on tour.” My wife almost killed me, but our marriage survived and the Newsday article was rather nice.
Most of the homeowners on the tour are gracious and thrilled for others to see their lovely homes, and to share their renovation stories. If they were merely show-offs, they wouldn’t bother with the pain of seeing 900+ people traipse through their home — just do a photo shoot for Met Home.
What’s with the ugly poster for the Fort Greene house tour on their site?