Welcome to a Retrospective of the Annual Heights Heritage Home Tour

Since 1977, thousands of people have spent a Sunday afternoon in September inspecting, comparing, analyzing, critiquing, and generally delighting in a variety of homes whose owners have graciously opened them for the annual Heights Heritage Home Tour.

During the Tour, each participant is provided with a souvenir tour book that includes a photograph and description of each house and usually some details of its history. Because these books provide an ongoing record of Cleveland Heights history, the Cleveland Heights Historical Society has made their contents available via our website. These homes may be displayed alphabetically by street name, by the tour year or by the build or design year of the home.  To view, simply select a display preference in the Heights Heritage Tour Index panel to the right of this page and select an address.  The index will persist throughout this section.  Please note, most photos are clickable for access to a larger view.

Please note that if a house was on the Tour more than once, only one description has been included. The year or years the house appeared on the tour is shown at the top of each posting. Obvious typographical and other errors have been corrected, but no attempt was made to standardize the stylistic preferences of the many people who wrote the items. In recent years, the tour book descriptions included a Look For section that alerted the visitor to small details (usually interior). These have been omitted here. The tours also included some commercial buildings, not all of which are listed. Gardens were added in 1999. These, too, have been omitted. For a full archival record of the tours, you may call the Heights Community Congress office at 216.321.6775, where all of the tour books can be viewed, along with other material relating to the tours.

The Heritage Tour is an important fund-raiser for the Heights Community Congress, which was founded in 1972 to promote and encourage integrated communities. The programs and activities of this coalition of religious, civic, educational, neighborhood, and community organizations serve as catalysts to stimulate citizen involvement and to encourage shared problem-solving. The Heights Community Congress and the Cleveland Heights Historical Society hope you enjoy your tour!