Biennial Tour of Homes and Gardens
Saturday, July 18th, 2026
1pm-5pm

Buy Your Tour of Homes Tickets Here

July 18, 2026
1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Will-Call and Ticket Purchases beginning at 12pm, at the Manistee City Marina, 480 River Street.

Since 1948, the Lakeside Club of Manistee has celebrated the extraordinary architecture and design of our beloved Victorian port city. Tour proceeds are distributed to local nonprofits organizations.

Welcome to Manistee, Michigan.  For millennia this location along the Manistee River and Manistee Lake has  served many communities along their shores, and is the ancestral and current home of the Little River Band of Ottawa  Indians. European exploration began with a possible visit by the  Jesuit priest Pere Marquette in the 1700s, and  permanent settlement commenced in the late 1830s and 1840s.

Manistee quickly became a center  for trade via  Lake Michigan, and  the site of  the Lumber industry. Lumber company owners and industrialists built outstanding Victorian homes in the popular Italianate, Queen Anne, 2nd Empire, and other high styles. Most of these are on the high ground south of River Street.

Workers for the big companies built more modest homes north of the Manistee River, in Maxwelltown southeast of the commercial area along River Street.

The 2026 tour is a celebration of the working class and commercial pursuits of 19th century Manistee.
 
 

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