Visitors to This Olde Housewalk Sunday can turn back time to an era of formal gardens, wide porches and vintage woodwork.
The Cathedral Area Preservation Association’s annual house walk, which draws visitors from all over to get the inside story on some of the neighborhood’s restored turn-of-the-century homes, starts out at Preservation Park.
The park, at Taylor and Wilcox Avenues, is the place to buy tickets and refreshments or take a break for musical entertainment.
Even the transportation is old-fashioned. Visitors can either take a leisurely house-to-house stroll or catch a ride on the trolley that will cruise the house-walk route.
Variety is part of the charm. “There’s nothing cookie-cutter here,” said John Puddicombe, the house walk publicity chairman.
The focus of the walk has changed over the years, Puddicombe said.
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“It was started in 1982 because the neighborhood was kind of in trouble. A lot of these old houses had been illegally broken up into apartments and rooming houses,” he said.
Now “there’s not a lot of fixer-uppers left,” he said.
But the house-walk tradition continues as “kind of a celebration of the neighborhood,” he said.
The event raises some funds for community projects, kindles community spirit and showcases the restoration work that transformed an area sliding slowly downhill into a much-admired section of the city, he said.
The five homes on display this year all date from the early 20th Century and have been carefully restored. The sixth stop on the tour is a garden walk.
Visitors will get a second look at Tom and Kathy Cawley’s home on Woodworth Avenue.
The Cawleys, who first displayed their 1913 home 16 years ago, have restored each room.
An old house takes a lot of work and attention, but the rewards are worth the effort, Kathy Cawley said. “It’s just quaint. It’s cozier. You can put more of yourself into it.
“It’s fun living in this neighborhood because everybody has a project going,” she said.
Set high on a hill, Joe and Marie-Pierre Baltz’s two-and-a-half story home was built in 1912 and features a full-length porch supported by brick piers.
The home furnishings include antique family treasures, such as an 18th Century bed from Marie-Pierre Baltz’s family home in France and Joe Baltz’s great-grandmother’s buffet.
A copy of the original blueprints will be on display.
The home of Joe and Laura Borio on Western Avenue is a two-story Queen Anne-style built near the end of the 19th Century.
The home has large bay windows and a colonial revival fireplace, and the kitchen still has the original tin ceiling.
Another period touch can be found in the rear of the house, where a wooden arbor covers a path leading to a carriage house.
The home of Michael D’Atri and Michael Shelley was built in 1908, and the owners have preserved some of the neoclassical touches, such as the Tuscan columns on the front porch.
The parlor of the house still has the original mahogany woodwork, molding and wainscotting, and the dining room boasts a built-in buffet.
Built in 1922, Brian Bottomley’s home is an example of prairie-style architecture.
Some of the original features preserved in the house include decorative glass on windows and doors, oak woodwork and a second-story sleeping porch cooled by casement windows.
The garden walk added to this year’s event takes visitors to the traditional English garden that blooms on the grounds of Kurt and Dana Pflederer’s home.
The garden is screened by a tall yew hedge and entered through a Victorian wrought iron gate.
Colorful flowers line the limestone walkway, and the back garden is terraced with limestone walls.
This Olde Housewalk will be held from noon to 6 p.m. Sunday.
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Tickets are $8 in advance and $10 on the day of the event. To reserve tickets, call 815-723-7603.