The Irvington Home Tour
Returning in Person May 19, 2024

A fundraiser of the Irvington Community Association

Since 1967, the Irvington Home Tour has been opening doors to our past, present, and future, giving participants an inside look at homes in the Irvington National Historic District, the largest such district in Oregon and one of largest in the country. After appearing virtually the past two years, the 2024 tour will be a live event! Don’t miss this opportunity to experience six beautiful houses, each brimming with historic character and design ideas.

Your ticket purchase helps support local schools, non-profits, and social programs throughout your community.

The Irvington Home Tour is the principal fundraiser of the Irvington Community Association’s Charitable Giving Program. Over the years, the tour has provided much-needed support for children and seniors throughout the community. Funds have gone to schools and nonprofits, including Irvington Elementary School, Grant and Jefferson High Schools, Kinship House, Meals on Wheels, Ride Connection, Metropolitan Family Services, Home-Forward, Hancock Street Preschool, Irvington Community Cooperative Preschool, and the Northeast Community Childhood Development Center. Learn more about the ICA’s Charitable Giving Program.

Home Tour History

The inaugural Irvington Home Tour, conducted in 1967, was the first such tour in the city. The tour was scheduled intermittently until 1983, when the popular program became a permanent part of the Irvington Community Association's annual calendar.

The Tour has its genesis in the turbulent times of the 1960s. Middle-class flight to the suburbs had drained population and resources away from the neighborhood and many of the fine homes were turned into rooming houses or falling into disrepair. Some of the larger ones had been abandoned altogether. Compounding the problem, the part of Irvington west of NE 15th Avenue was "red lined" by the racist managements of local banks, making it difficult for residents to obtain loans for restoration or purchase of the houses there.

In those years, apartment developers began to demolish the homes between Tillamook and Broadway, replacing them with uninteresting apartment buildings whose principal architectural feature was a large parking lot. By 1964, a few neighborhood residents took the lead to organize the community to fight the blight. The Irvington Community Association (ICA) was formed that year, the first such organization in Portland.

In 1967, one of the activities organized by the ICA was a home tour of 20 neighborhood residences. The idea was to inform the larger community of the historic homes still very much intact in the neighborhood, to provide an activity that would help neighbors get acquainted, and to raise money for community projects. Those goals have remained the focus of the tour ever since. In the ensuing years, the tour was held sporadically, as interest and available volunteers permitted.

By the early 1980s, the germ of an urban renaissance sprung up and the Irvington Home Tour was made a regular annual activity. The Tour provided a stimulus to rehabilitation and recognition for the home owners who were making major investments in cash and “sweat equity” to restore their properties. The Tour began to grow in attendance as citywide interest in Irvington increased in the 1980s and 1990s. By 1991 the attendance had grown, and revenues from the event had grown beyond the few hundred dollars that was typical of earlier years. In response, the ICA created its Charitable Giving Program and developed guidelines for distributing the proceeds of the Tour to worthy charities that have a connection to the Irvington neighborhood.

Today, as Irvington has resumed its status as one of the premier neighborhoods of Portland, the Tour continues its role of bringing neighbors together and raising money for community projects. Where once sales of a few hundred tickets were considered a success, now sales are capped at 1,000 and most years tickets sell out in advance.