Select tickets
Architecture Walks begin at 6 p.m. in June, July, August and September.
Market Square, one of the public squares in the Allen brothers' original plan of Houston, was the location of the city market and City Hall from 1841 to 1939. For nearly a century, this was Houston's civic and commercial crossroads, where goods were traded, decisions were made and the city grew into itself.
The district declined in the mid-20th century, but preservation and reinvestment have returned historic buildings to active use and restored Market Square as a gathering place.
Our 90-minute, docent-guided walking tour traces that arc of decline and renewal. We'll visit the 1861 Kennedy Bakery, now La Carafe, one of Houston's oldest surviving commercial buildings, and walk the 300 block of Main Street, where a largely intact row of late 19th-century commercial structures still defines the street. Along the way, we'll take in the commanding façades of the early 20th-century financial district and talk about what survives, what has been lost and what it takes to sustain a historic downtown.
We'll also look at the reimagining of Market Square Park, reopened in 2010 as a welcoming urban green space rooted in its past but designed for the city Houston is still becoming.