The Town of Houston Architecture Walk

Please note that advance ticket purchase is required for this tour.

Houston was founded in 1836 and became capital of the Republic of Texas just months later. Government officials, merchants, immigrants, soldiers and fortune-seekers poured into the new town, where construction struggled to keep pace with the growing population. The Houston that emerged along Buffalo Bayou was ambitious and energetic, but also muddy, expensive and notoriously rowdy.

The buildings of Houston’s earliest years have disappeared, but their stories remain. On this 90-minute, docent-guided walk, we’ll use the modern downtown streetscape to reconstruct the town the Allen brothers knew. We’ll visit the sites of the Republic of Texas Capitol, the president’s house, early hotels and shops, the city market and Houston’s first purpose-built theater, while discovering how the original 1836 town plan still shapes downtown today.

Firsthand accounts will bring the fledgling city and its residents to life. We’ll hear about a capitol building that opened without a roof, hotel guests who slept on moss-filled pallets, a courthouse where hog thieves were sentenced to public lashings and the Round Tent, a 30-foot-high circular saloon that became one of the town’s most popular gathering places.

Together, these stories reveal a Houston that has almost entirely vanished — a tiny capital on the edge of the Texas frontier that was already growing at a pace that would become one of the city’s defining characteristics.

Photo: Capitol Hotel, the former capitol of the Republic of Texas / PH file

Things to remember

• This is an exterior architecture tour. It doesn't go inside any buildings.
• There are no public restrooms along the tour route.
  

About the tour

Advance ticket purchase is required. Tickets are offered on a first-come, first-served basis, and walk-up registrations cannot be accommodated. Tour tickets are nonrefundable.

Registrants will receive parking and check-in information by e-mail in advance of the tour.

In the event of inclement weather that prevents the tour from being offered as planned, registrants will be notified as early as possible with options to attend a rescheduled tour or transfer their reservation to another Preservation Houston tour.

Do you have an Architecture Walks pass?

If you are a Preservation Houston member and have received a free Architecture Walks pass, you may redeem it for admission to this tour. E-mail tours@preservationhouston.org and we’ll be happy to assist.

Passes are redeemable subject to ticket availability.