Preservation Austin gets ready for its latest homes tour
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
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.