Sherman Hill Skipped a Year to Get Its 50th Anniversary Right

Walk through a house on the Sherman Hill home tour and you might find a dining room with fresh plaster and a period chandelier next door to a bedroom where the lath is still exposed and the paint samples are taped to the wall. That is not an accident of scheduling. The Sherman Hill Association builds its "Doors to the Past" walking tour specifically around homes in different stages of restoration, some finished, some mid-project, so visitors see both the destination and the work still underway to get there.

This year, that same patience shows up in the calendar itself. The tour did not run in 2025. The Association paused it on purpose, spending the year in planning so it could return September 26 and 27, 2026, as the 50th anniversary edition. If you have lived in Des Moines long enough to expect this tour every fall without fail, the gap year is the story worth understanding before you show up with a ticket.

The Year They Didn't Run It

Most anniversaries just happen. You count forward from the start date and the milestone arrives whether anyone plans for it or not. Sherman Hill did something different. Rather than let the 50th land on whatever weekend the calendar handed them, the Association took a full year off first, framing 2025 as preparation for "an exciting milestone" and asking neighbors to mark their calendars for a bigger celebration in September 2026.

That decision tells you something about how this neighborhood treats its own history. The same organization that spends decades coaxing Victorian houses back from decline was willing to interrupt its own longest-running tradition rather than rush the version that mattered most. If you know Sherman Hill's building stock, you already recognize the instinct. Nothing here gets fixed in a single weekend. Why would the anniversary tour be any different?

What Fifty Years Actually Covers

Sherman Hill is Des Moines' oldest organized neighborhood, with roots back to the early 1870s. It did not stay grand the whole way through. Local history sources describe the neighborhood's arc as one of blight followed by a deliberate restoration push, with residents launching that recovery effort in the 1970s. The "Doors to the Past" tour grew directly out of that decade, which is why 2026 marks fifty years rather than some rounder number tied to the neighborhood's founding.

One detail worth flagging if you go looking for the paperwork yourself: local sources don't agree on the exact year Sherman Hill landed on the National Register of Historic Places. Some put it at 1979, the Association's own tour materials say 1982. Nobody seems to treat the three-year gap as a big deal locally, and honestly, it isn't. The restoration was already underway before either date, and it's still going. The neighborhood counts roughly 300 structures today, with about 150 of those standing as houses or apartment buildings in styles ranging from Victorian and Queen Anne to Italianate, Classic, Stick, and Flemish design. Most of that inventory predates any government paperwork entirely.

Fifteen Doors Out of Three Hundred

Here is the number that puts the tour in perspective: out of roughly 150 residences and apartment buildings in Sherman Hill, only about 15 open their doors for any given tour. That is a small, curated slice, chosen each year by the Association and the homeowners willing to let strangers walk through their living rooms for a weekend. The selection changes annually, which is part of why longtime attendees keep coming back. The house you toured five years ago is probably not on this year's route, and the one you're curious about might finally be.

The tour runs both days from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., starting at the Hoyt Sherman Place box office. That building itself is worth knowing before you arrive. Built in 1877, Hoyt Sherman Place operates today as a working theater, art gallery, and event venue, and it sits close enough to most of the tour homes that many residents walk to the shows there rather than drive. If your only association with the address is ticket links for touring acts, the tour is a chance to see the building as the neighborhood anchor it has been since well before it ever hosted a concert.

Here's what the weekend logistics look like, based on the Association's own event listing:

• Dates: September 26 and 27, 2026
• Hours: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days
• Start point: Hoyt Sherman Place box office, 1501 Woodland Avenue
• Format: Self-paced walking tour of roughly 15 historic homes, plus gardens and other points of interest
• Tickets: Available now through the Sherman Hill Association

What's Within a Few Blocks

Sherman Hill isn't just a museum of old houses for one weekend a year. It's a neighborhood people live in, and a few of its current fixtures are worth building into your route if you're spending a Saturday there. The Good Butcher has become the neighborhood's newer addition, a local meat and gourmet food shop the Association itself has highlighted in its own updates. A Dong Restaurant has served the area's Vietnamese food for years and remains a neighborhood standby. Gateway Market rounds things out as the closer-in grocery stop that residents rely on instead of driving out to the suburbs for basics.

None of this is staged for tourists. It's just what's already there, which is part of what makes the tour weekend feel less like an event bused in from outside and more like a neighborhood opening its doors, literally, to people who don't usually get past the front porch.

The Tour That Doubles as a Fundraiser Elsewhere on the Calendar

Doors to the Past isn't the only weekend the Association runs. Later in the fall, Sherman Hill hosts Halloween on the Hill, where residents decorate their historic homes and collect food donations for the Des Moines Area Religious Council's food pantry network. It's a different event with a different purpose, but it points to the same pattern as the home tour: this is a neighborhood that treats its own traditions as work worth doing carefully, not just repeating on autopilot.

That pattern is the actual thesis behind this year's milestone. Sherman Hill didn't get to fifty years of walking tours by running the same script every September without variation. It got there by pausing when the plan called for a pause, changing which fifteen houses open their doors each year, and treating restoration, whether of a Queen Anne facade or of its own signature event, as something you don't rush just because the calendar says it's time.

If You're Going

Tickets are available now directly through the Sherman Hill Association, and the tour route starts and ends at the Hoyt Sherman Place box office both days. Wear shoes you can walk several blocks in, and budget more time than you think you need. Homeowners and volunteers guide each stop, sharing the history behind the property as you go, and a fifteen-house route with that much conversation built in runs longer than a quick self-guided walk.

If you've been meaning to see inside one of these houses for years, this is the year the neighborhood built on purpose. That's worth more than a passing Saturday plan.

If you're curious about what a home like the ones on this tour is actually worth to own, or what it takes to buy or sell a piece of Des Moines history like this, Laura Major would love to talk it through with you. Let's Connect.