When Matthew Donovan bought his fixer-upper in Eastwood, he thought he was gaining a little more square footage and a yard he and friends could enjoy. Quickly, though, he figured out that he had also bought into a neighborhood where residents know and look out for each other. They enjoy rotating monthly get-togethers and other social events that cement the bonds that have grown through the years.

Donovan’s home will be open to the public on the Eastwood Historic Home Tour happening October 19 and 20, along with four other homes in a tree-lined neighborhood founded more than a century ago for Houston’s emerging middle class.

Two other fall home tours—the highly curated AIA Houston Home Tour on November 2 and 3 and Preservation Houston’s Good Brick Tour November 9 and 10—showcase homes and structures that tell other chapters of the city’s architectural history, but with different approaches.

AIA Houston is about the best of the city’s new architecture, and an opportunity for those who like to drive by beautiful homes to get a peek inside, too. In most cases, architects, builders, and interior designers will be on hand to talk to tour-goers.

The Good Brick Tour highlights the best in historic homes, many of which are winners of Good Brick Awards, honors given annually to those who help preserve our architectural and cultural heritage. This year’s tour opens up the Art Moderne–style Eldorado Ballroom, a Third Ward landmark, and the sanctuary of South Main Baptist Church, with its Romanesque and Classical elements and some of the city’s most beautiful stained glass.

Three stops on the Good Brick Tour take you into a Sixth Ward Victorian cottage, a Woodland Heights bungalow, and a midcentury gem in Cherokee Place that in 2023 received City of Houston Protected Landmark status.

The midcentury home is that of Peter Morris, whose architect father Si Morris was part of the team that designed the Astrodome. Architect Lucian T. Hood Jr. designed the 3,200-square-foot, ranch-style home on a large corner lot in the 1950s. For a decade, Peter and his wife, Fan, lived in a 6,000-plus-square-foot home by renowned architect John F. Staub in Broadacres. It needed a good deal of work, so the Morrises decided to sell.

In the early 1990s, they found the Cherokee Place home that was initially built for a Houston couple. At some point, it was sold to the Episcopal Church and served as a home for Bishop Maurice M. Benitez. The sleek home stood out in a neighborhood that was originally filled with Georgian, Tudor, Colonial Revival, and French Eclectic–style homes. Now, the neighborhood is changing in a new way, as that original inventory is replaced with towering modern homes that use even more of their lots’ square footage.

“It’s a wonderful house. We had a neighbor who knew a lot about architecture. He once said, ‘You have bought a really great house; you need to take good care of it,’” Morris says.

The Morrises added another layer to the home’s pedigree when they hired the renowned interior designer Herbert Wells to help transition the family from a more formal home to a smaller, more casual one. He advised them on furnishings and made a few tweaks to the house, especially the kitchen, which still has its original cabinets and square-tile counters.

“We’ve still got that Pepto-Bismol pink tile that was very common,” Morris says. “Herb said to us, ‘This pink tile is hard to overlook, so we have to outpink the pink.’ In five minutes, he had it all figured out.”

Wells’s answer was to paint the kitchen’s lower cabinets gray and the upper cabinets an even brighter shade of pink to de-emphasize the counters. Some 40 years later, the Morrises still love that pink kitchen.

Except for some flooring changes and a big makeover in a pool house and guest house, tour participants will see the Morris home as it has been for the past 60-plus years. Architect Ben Koush and his partner Luis de las Cuevas have helped the Morrises with recent work, including rewiring and replumbing the home. Koush notes that the home still has its original flagstone in the foyer, stone wall in the family room, hardwood floors, and mahogany paneled walls.

Changes to Donovan’s home have been more dramatic. While the Harris County Appraisal District lists his home as being built in 1935, he suspects that the garage was built then, and the house followed sometime in the 1950s. He reasons that most of Eastwood’s 1930s-era homes are built pier-on-beam; his is built on a slab as other 1950s homes were. He initially thought he’d stick to cosmetic changes, but when he discovered that a rear addition was never properly supported, he needed to add support beams.

He bought the home in early 2018 as the city was still coping with Hurricane Harvey damage and reconstruction. Peeking into the walls, he found they were filled with aluminum foil—not insulation—so the project became a lengthy to-the-studs renovation. When he hosted a demolition day for friends, they picked up sledgehammers and swung away at walls and cabinets.

“We just went to town. It was so much fun,” Donovan says. “At the time I was 28 or 29, and I definitely did not expect to be sitting on two mortgage payments and a project that was going to take double the time and double the money. I did anything I could myself to chip away at the cost.”

The now-34-year-old tech consultant grew up in Houston’s suburbs and lived in a few other places before returning to Houston in his mid-20s. He bought a townhouse in the East End, so his new place in Eastwood—and the adoption of his cocker spaniel–poodle mix, Emoji—represent a new, more grown-up phase of his life.

His home was featured on the 2019 Eastwood tour as a work in progress. This year, visitors on the tour can see how he brought new life to the place.

“There’s so much depth and history here and so much of a sense of community in Eastwood. It’s a really, really special neighborhood,” Donovan says.

Know Before You Go