Summer is always travel time, packed full of family vacations, holidays at the coast, and visitors from places that lack the ideal summer climate we have. One of the cheapest yet most satisfying trips we can take is a time travel tour of old Portland homes. The Architectural Heritage Center has the time machine set up for a public, self-guided tour July 27, 2013.

Five private homes will be open, including the quirky, interesting downtown residence of Pink Martini bandleader and Portland native Thomas Lauderdale. He and partner Philip Iosca live in the Harker Building, a three-story, cast-iron façade structure. Built in 1878 for commercial use, it has been home to the Western Picture Frame Company and the Oregon Conservatory of Music. (Now, Lauderdale’s band practices on the ground floor!)

Other homes on the tour range through the 1880s into the 1950s. Far away from the Harker Building, but close in time is the Victorian Italianate-style 1884 house on Mt. Tabor. While Lauderdale’s home was in Portland’s original commercial district on the west side of the Willamette, this house, built just a few years later, was originally surrounded by farms. In time it was divided into a two apartments, but in the past 20 years the current owners have restored it.

The other homes on the Heritage tour are:

• Daniel and Cora Grout House, Craftsman “English Chalet” style from 1910, designed by William Christmas Knighton on three lots with a “commanding view” of the city and West Hills.
• Giesy/Failing House, Arts and Crafts house designed by Joseph Jacobbebrger and Alfred Smith and considered one of the “most elaborate residences to be built” in 1911.  
• Ralph and Ruth Williams Jr. House, Northwest Regional Mid-Century Modernism, from 1956, designed by Richard Marlitt.