Preservation Austin gets ready for its latest homes tour
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This home on Crestway Drive is included in the tour. Photo: Courtesy of James H. Ruiz Photography
Preservation Austin hosts its 2026 Homes Tour this weekend, with a rich variety of architectural styles in neighborhoods across town on display.
Why it matters: It's the best chance to peek into Austin's most beautiful homes.
What's happening: This year's tour for the first time includes a home in the Montopolis neighborhood and one from the 1970s.
- Other highlights include a Travis Heights folk Victorian home from the late 1890s, a midcentury modern residence on Caswell Avenue and a 1928 European period revival residence just north of the University of Texas campus that has housed professors and deans.

What they're saying: "I feel like we should do what we can to preserve the good parts of Austin," Lori Plicque, a third-generation Austin native and the owner of a home on Crestway Drive that's included in the tour, tells Axios.
- The 1970 split-level contemporary ranch-style home was built by members of the Dacy family, originally Lebanese immigrants who ran a shoe store on Congress Avenue in the 1920s.
- Plicque tells Axios the home has special meaning for her as a Black woman because the shoe store was known for allowing Black customers to try on apparel while other stores along Congress Avenue did not.
- "They were a family with integrity that did the right thing," she says.
Between the lines: Proceeds support Preservation Austin's advocacy efforts and educational programming.
- The nonprofit has recently been pushing for some sort of accountability for developers who knocked down much of the old Cenote cafe building on Cesar Chavez.
- It's also been helping East Austin homeowners find ways to preserve their homes.
📍 If you go: Ten homes are on the tour — five each day.
- Until noon Friday, tickets are available online, starting at $40 per person. After noon on Friday and day-of tickets are $55 and will be available for purchase in person at any of the homes on the tour.
- A ticket covers both days of the tour.
The bottom line: "The tour embodies all these threads of Austin that we really need to hold onto amid the city's rapid change," Lindsey Derrington, Preservation Austin's executive director, tells Axios.
