2020 Virtual House Tour

Victorian Alliance of San Francisco launches free “Open Victorians” Virtual Historic House Tour

This year the Victorian Alliance will be producing a virtual house tour, you can support the tour and our grant making program by donating with the button below.


The Victorian Alliance of San Francisco announces its first ever virtual historic house tour, Open Victorians, a free online experience that launches October 5 www.tourvictorians.com. Sign up to get reminders for each video’s launch. The tour showcases six of San Francisco’s classic Victorian homes, private residences that can be visited only via this virtual event. This series of originally-produced videos will introduce viewers to the homes’ interiors, exteriors, furnishings and décor with new videos launching each week until October 23.

The Alliance has produced this six-video series to showcase San Francisco’s historic Victorian homes to a much larger audience than a traditional, in-person house tour. Participants will meet the artisans and homeowners that have restored and cared for these homes, experiencing them through six different themes, including “Decorative Finishes”, “Who Lived Here Before Me?”, and “Future, Legacy”. After the initial launch, each video will be kept active and can be seen again, so that the end of the virtual house tour, all of the video tours can be visited together. 

The Tour will culminate in a Front Parlor Salon webinar, scheduled for October 25, featuring leaders of preservation organizations from throughout the nation, sharing their ideas to inspire the next generation of passionate preservationists. Sign up to receive more details on the Salon webinar at: https://www.tourvictorians.com/contact

“With Open Victorians, the Alliance will demonstrate how historic interiors can be adapted and preserved for both contemporary and traditional lifestyles. We offer these examples as alternatives to the current “gut and entirely remodel” trend, which diminishes our city’s great architectural legacy,” said president Rob Thomson.

Contact: housetour@victorianalliance.org

House Tour Acknowledgements

Our usual tour requires hundreds of volunteers, house captains and their docents, selecting a neighborhood and the houses, researching the house histories, house drawings, design and layout of our catalogue, and more. The Pandemic challenged the Alliance to adapt and find new ways to get out our message of exterior and interior preservation, for the purpose of protecting our collective cultural memory.

Our much smaller volunteer group has produced a ground-breaking series of videos, in a format the organization couldn't have imagined even one year ago. So, we'd like to honor all those volunteers who came before us, keeping the preservation flame alive, and having the confidence to take new risks for calling attention to the Alliance's mission. And a special honor to two long-time members, Richard Reutlinger and Jo Ann Vandenburg, who both passed away since our 2018 tour. And Richard Zillman, longtime member gone now for several years, who foresaw this time of going beyond the Bay Area in our marketing efforts. Dedicated volunteers and visionaries, our tour acknowledges their contributions to the founding and on-going activities of the Victorian Alliance of San Francisco.

Virtual House Tour Committee, 2020

This tour could not have been possible without the professionalism of our members Fiona McDougall and Jonathan Villet, of One World Communications owcom.com

  • Chair: Gail Baugh
  • House Selection Committee: Gail Baugh, Anson Moran, Ray Zablotny, Bonnie Spindler, Bathsheba Malsheen
  • House Histories: Gail Baugh, Leah Culver, Ray Zablotny, George Horsfal, Joseph Pecora; editing and owner interviews Tamara Hill
  • Legal: Megan Smith, Derek Schaible, Fiona McDougall, Anson Moran
  • Development Committee: Mike Hammond, Callie Enders, Ray Zablotny, Bonnie Spindler, Joe Mallet
  • Creative and Production Committee (branding assets, web design, pre-production, filming and production/editing): Amy Firman, Fiona McDougall, Jonathan Villet, Christina LaLanne
  • Webinar: Yana Rathman, Mimi Sparrow, Gail Baugh, Jennifer Lindsay, Jamie Lopez, Rob Thomson
  • Marketing outreach/social media Committee: Fiona McDougall, Gail Baugh, Mimi Sparrow, Jennifer Lindsay, Megan Smith, Christina LaLanne, Jonathan Villet, Amy Firman, Kyle McGuire
  • Newsletter editors: Megan Smith (mail version) and Andra Young (digital version)
  • VASF website: Kyle McGuire
  • Still Photography: Anson Moran, Project Turtle
  • And our lovely host for each video: Bonnie Spindler

Contractors

  • Videographer & Editor: Jonathan Prewitt, Jmphilms
  • Grip and Lighting: Michael June Vallejo
  • Social Media: Victoria Spillman, Spillman Digital