The Park City Museum invites the public to step through the doors of time when it revives its Historic Home Tour.
The event, which the museum put on hold in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, will return from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Saturday, June 17, said Morgan Pierce, Park City Museum executive director.
“We are happy that the board and staff have come through to get the planning done,” he said. “We’ve also had so much support from the homeowners who are participating this year. So it looks like we’re getting back to where we once were.”
The Historic Home Tour has been one of the museum’s signature programs for 20 years, and shines light on some of Park City’s most beautiful, interesting and oldest historic homes, Pierce said.
“Participants not only learned about these homes and Park City’s history,” he said. “The tour was also a right-of-honor amongst homeowners whose homes are part of the tour.”
This year’s neighborhood includes lower Park Avenue, which includes Miners Hospital and the Park City Library, Pierce said.
“We have at least 10 sites — historic homes, the hospital and the library — that will be on the route,” he said. “All of them are located within the 1100, 1200 and 1300 blocks of Park Avenue.” All the structures are close together and accessible by walking, according to Pierce.
“They are so close that as I was driving very slowly along our newly drawn map the other day, I would see one house and look down to see the next address, only to look up and find that I had passed it,” he said with a laugh.
The houses in this area were built and occupied by miners, according to Pierce.
“This tour is their story, but we also wanted to share the homes’ designs and architecture,” he said.
Miners Hospital that Pierce says is “keenly” located in the area at City Park, wasn’t originally built where it stands, but is a huge historic presence, Pierce said.
“When it was built in 1904, it was the first means of healthcare for the miners in Park City,” he said. “Most of the town’s births and deaths during that time occurred in the hospital. “
Miners Hospital will serve as the starting point for this year’s Historic Home Tour, Pierce said.
“People who have purchased tickets online can check in there and pick up their packets, and people who want to purchase tickets the day of the tour may do so at the hospital,” he said. “We kindly ask people if they can register in advance, but we will be selling tickets the day of.”
Tickets can be purchased in advance online or they can be purchased at the Park City Museum store.
The Park City Museum staff have developed a way of selecting different neighborhoods for the Historic Home Tour since there are so many areas in Park City to showcase, Pierce said
“We rotate all the different areas,” he said. “In our planning stages, we look back at prior home tour materials and brochures, and start tracking things out on a spreadsheets.”
Once Pierce and his staff decide on an area, they pay the homes a visit to ask if homeowners would be interested in participating in the tour.
“The majority of these homeowners are members of the museum, so they are supportive of the work we do,” Pierce said. “They also take pride in their historic homes. And they aren’t only proud of showing off the historic sections of their houses. They are also happy to show upgrades they have made to these homes.”
Pierce loves hearing about these structure’s history, but he’s also interested in how the homes are used in the 21st century.
“I like seeing how older homes have been retrofitted and renovated to codes that we expect to see today,” he said. “And I’m happy to say that half of the sites on this tour haven’t been featured before.”
Many of the homeowners will be on hand to greet and welcome people during the tour, Pierce said.
“They will talk about previous owners and the challenges of preservation work,” he said.
Some homeowners will not be at home, so museum’s docents will do the greetings, give tours and answer questions, Pierce said.
“We encourage people to come with questions, so they can learn more about these structures,” he said.
Before entering the homes, participants will be asked to wear booties over their shoes, Pierce said.
“They can pick up these covers on the porches of every house,” he said. “We want to make sure we don’t track in who knows what into these homes.”
As an added bonus to the Historic Home Tour, the Park City Museum will celebrate its free museum day on June 17, and the public will be able to visit the museum free of charge from 10 a.m.-5 p.m., Pierce said.
“Anyone who is getting ready to go on the home tour or wants to learn more about Park City after they do the home tour can come and visit the museum and see our exhibits,” he said.