It was the Irvington Home Tour today so things were quite busy in the neighborhood. Every year the community association organizes a tour of 8 homes that neighbors have kindly (and bravely) agreed to open to the public. Around 1,000 visitors take the tour. All funds raised by the ticket sales go to neighborhood schools and community projects. The tour is held rain or shine, today was a bit rainy. The neighborhood has a variety of early 20th century residential architecture and the tour is always very interesting. There was a good buzz and lots of kids out with lemonade stands on the sidewalks.

At the end of 2010 the neighborhood was listed as an Historic District on the National Register. This listing is of mixed benefit, in my opinion. Similar to listed buildings in other countries it means there are restrictions and architectural reviews that have to be conducted before any work can be done to one's home. Thankfully in this case it just goes for the exterior of the building only, not interiors. A basic design review runs $1,000 and can take up to 3 months for approval, if approved at all. If your home requires some repairs or, for example, you want a handrail installed on your porch steps, then one is not going to be very happy to have to submit to this process for such a small project. What might have been an inexpensive job is now going to cost you the review fee and the scrutiny of many people, not to mention delays.

I am curious to see how this will shake out over the next few years. From what I read in my local paper folks are not happy. Whether people will defer repairs to their homes or just do them and to heck with the busy bodies and hope no one rats on them, I don't know. Personally I'm not thrilled with it but I get why the community association pushed for the historic designation.