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Arts & Entertainment

Historic Home Tour on the Horizon

The Martinez Historical Society will hold its annual Historic Home Tour, always a highly anticipated event, on Saturday, Oct. 12.

The Society opens a handful of private homes with historic or architectural merit to the public.

Tickets are available at the website and will soon be available at certain local businesses. Tickets are $30, or $25 if purchased in advance.

“Unless one knows the owner, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the interior of the house,” Home Tour Chair Carolyn Boone Duncan said.  “The tours are also a great way for visitors to develop an appreciation for our town’s historic and architectural heritage; and the website is the vehicle for doing the same on the worldwide web.”  

The Conference of California Historical Societies have praised the website, and the photos by Carter Wilson, for its overall excellence.

“It’s the best home tour website that we have yet seen,” CCHS administrator Ben Wirick said.  “It does an excellent job of portraying the home tour experience.  We encourage other historical societies throughout California to look to Martinez as a model for setting up their own home tour websites.”

The Historical Society (http://www.martinezhistory.org/) organized its first historic home tour in 2007 and it has become an annual event held on the 2nd Saturday in October of each year.

Martinez was a Gold Rush town established in 1849 and was long the commercial center for the County, giving it the largest collection of historic homes in the area.

One such home belongs to Sabine Pitts, whose 1925 Craftsman house on Alhambra Avenue is well known to Martinez residents because of the luscious year round garden surrounding it.

“I loved having my house on the Tour last year,” Pitts said. Showing my beloved home and garden was very rewarding. I met some of the nicest people during the Tour.”

Details are available on the event’s website (http://www.martinezhometour.com/).

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