2026 Doors Open California
75+ Sites Across the State | Weekends in September, 2026
Doors Open California is the largest statewide celebration of historic places in California. Enthusiasts of historic architecture, design, and cultural heritage will have access to over 75 sites across the state on the weekends during the month of September 2026.
Registration is now open!
Register
Registration Details
Registration Form
Doors Open California is the largest statewide celebration of historic places in California. Enthusiasts of historic architecture, design, and cultural heritage will have access to over 70 sites across the state on the weekends during the month of September 2025.
Registration is now open!
What Your Registration Includes
Your Doors Open California registration fee of just $20 includes the following exciting perks.
- Complete access to more than 70 sites across the state of California in six regions
- A Doors Open button, giving you access to all sites on the weekend
- Access to our special Doors Open California virtual map of participating sites
- Self-guided and other tours made available from Doors Open partners
- Special experiences and unique curated content, accessible only to Doors Open participants.
Sites & Schedule
More than 70 sites on weekends in the month of September are planned for Doors Open. With your registration, you have access to as many as you can attend (pre-registration required, and some sites have capacity limits).
Sponsorship & Media Kits
Sponsorship and Media Details
Sponsorship
Sponsorship provides significant marketing exposure at key Doors Open events. To become a sponsor, you can select the option below or visit californiapreservation.org/doca/sponsor/
Media Details
The California Preservation Foundation invites media professionals to cover the 5th Annual Doors Open California, a unique statewide event offering behind-the-scenes access to over 70 historic sites every weekend in September 2026. For more details, contact Jon Haeber at jon@californiapreservation.org or (415) 495-0349 x201.
Media Information & Press Kits
We’ve provided some downloadable resources and social media promotional tools for you to help spread the word about Doors Open California! Media inquiries can be directed to cpf@californiapreservation.org or by dialing 415.495.0349.
Sponsorship Information
Doors Open California is a signature statewide event that draws over 1,000 participants who will get rare & special access to amazing architecture and hidden histories weekends in September. As a sponsor, you will be highlighted as a supporter of the largest statewide celebration of historic places. Walking tours, hidden vaults of local museums, inaccessible areas of historic buildings, or enlightening stories – it’s a chance to experience history first-hand. Over 70 amazing places in California will be highlighted.
Our Sponsors are invited to join us in supporting our third-ever Doors Open California event, where local, nonprofit, government, and enterprise partners will showcase sites in 50+ distinct cities in all corners of California.
BECOME A DOORS OPEN SPONSOR
Click here or on the thumbnail below for the 2025 sponsorship brochure
Partnership Information
Doors Open California Partners are critical to making this event creative, inclusive, and compelling. Partners could be nonprofit organizations, firms, local governments, educational institutions, museums, property owners, or anyone interested in sharing a special, unique place in their community that is worth recognizing and protecting.
Partners create or provide access to places that typically aren’t accessed by the public, and they may share histories that aren’t typically told. Partners, in turn, tap into CPF’s international audience of more than 40,000 supporters and followers. Partners may also solicit Doors Open attendees to support their own efforts – as volunteers, donors, or other types of supporters.
Ways to Partner with Doors Open…
Submit a Proposal for Doors Open 2027
We would love to hear your ideas! This simple form is meant to be completed in less than five minutes. For full details, visit: https://californiapreservation.org/doca/ideas/
Sign Up as an Affiliated Local Business
Local businesses near Doors Open Sites can choose to sponsor Doors Open – or, if they’d like to be included on participant itineraries, they can offer a special discount or gift to registered Doors Open participants wielding a wrist band.
Full Schedule of Events and Sites
Preliminary schedule · Subject to change
Doors Open California 2026
Browse special tours, open houses, and behind-the-scenes access by September weekend. Some sites have capacity limits and may require RSVP. For the latest details, visit the interactive app in August.
Sierra Foothills
North Coast / Central Coast
Monterey / Sacramento
L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Sept. 5–622 events
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Rarely Open: Alleghany’s Mine Museum and Old Theater
Alleghany · Sierra Foothills
Pack a lunch and head into high Sierra mining history at Alleghany, home of the Original Sixteen to One Mine, one of the longest-operating mines in the United States. Doors Open visitors can explore the mining museum and the old theater and school gym—spaces rarely open to the public in a town whose population and fortunes changed dramatically over the twentieth century.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
New this year
Berkeley’s Civic Landmarks Behind the Scenes
Berkeley · Bay Area
Doors Open takes visitors behind the scenes at two important Berkeley civic buildings facing very different futures. Tour the 1928 Veterans Memorial Building, now home to the Berkeley Historical Society & Museum, and see original auditorium and lodge-room details, then visit the former 1909 City Hall to learn why preservation, seismic safety, funding, and reuse are all intertwined.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Inside Oakland’s 16th Street Station and Signal Tower
Oakland · Bay Area
Doors Open offers rare access to Oakland’s grand 1912 Southern Pacific 16th Street Station, designed by Jarvis Hunt and newly listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Guided visits open the main hall, baggage wing, elevated platform, and signal tower while connecting the station to transcontinental travel, electric rail, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
10:00 AM–3:00 PM
New this year
Small-Group Access to California Pioneer Collections
San Francisco · Bay Area
Go behind the scenes at the Society of California Pioneers, where Doors Open storage tours are limited to just six people. Staff will open archival boxes, explain preservation and research practices, and share rarely seen photographs, artifacts, and recently processed materials. A curated program-room display adds a hands-on encounter with early California history.
10:00 AM–1:00 PM
New this year
Hardhat Access Inside San Jose’s Bank of Italy
San Jose · Bay Area
Put on a hardhat for exclusive Doors Open access inside San Jose’s 1926 Bank of Italy Building, a 14-story National Register landmark by H.A. Minton. While restoration and conversion are underway, small groups will see the building in transition and learn about San Jose’s first major historic tax credit project and office-to-residential conversion in more than a decade.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
New this year
Agnews Hospital: Stories, Artifacts, and Grounds
Santa Clara · Bay Area
This intimate Doors Open experience connects the Agnews Historic Museum, cemetery, and surviving hospital landscape through the voices of people who knew the site firsthand. With museum capacity limited to about 25 visitors, participants will encounter medical artifacts, pharmacy cabinets, auditorium roller skates, personal stories of care and community, and exterior views of the remaining hospital buildings.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Verify time
Gold Rush Machinery at Kentucky Mine
Sierra City · Sierra Foothills
Follow gold from mine to mill at Sierra City’s Kentucky Mine, where Doors Open visitors can tour the blacksmith shop, miner’s cabin, and remarkably preserved stamp mill. This is a chance to see how water-powered Pelton wheels, stamps, and shaker tables processed ore, while learning how an 1853 mining operation became one of Sierra County’s most evocative historic sites.
10:30 AM–12:30 PM
New this year
Gilded Altars and Lost Chinatowns of San Jose
San Jose · Bay Area
Doors Open guests receive a special presentation and private museum tour at San Jose’s Chinese American Historical Museum, a replica of the late nineteenth-century Ng Shing Gung temple. Highlights include artifacts from five former San Jose Chinatowns and the original 1888 gilded altar—one of the most extraordinary surviving Chinese temple altars presented in the United States.
11:00 AM–2:00 PM
Returning partner
San Francisco’s Intact Victorian House Museum
San Francisco · Bay Area
Step inside the 1886 Haas-Lilienthal House, a Queen Anne residence preserved with much of its family furniture and contents intact. Doors Open guests can experience the craftsmanship, rooms, and layered domestic history of San Francisco’s only intact Victorian house museum, a city landmark and National Register-listed home now stewarded by San Francisco Heritage.
11:00 AM–12:30 PM
New this year
Santa Clara University: Archaeology Behind the Mission Campus
Santa Clara · Bay Area
Go beyond a standard campus walk with Santa Clara University’s Cultural Resource Management team. Doors Open participants will trace more than 2,000 years of history—from pre-contact Native American presence and Mission Santa Clara to John Montgomery, ROTC, and major archaeological discoveries—and, time permitting, step inside the historic Ricard Memorial Observatory’s curation labs, where recovered materials are preserved and studied.
12:00 PM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Inside Forest City’s Last Commercial Dance Hall
Forest City · Sierra Foothills
Visit Forest City, a National Register Historic District perched at 4,600 feet on the Great Blue Lead. Doors Open guests can step inside the historic Dance Hall—the last remaining large commercial structure in this near-ghost town—view photo displays and museum materials, and use the self-guided walking tour to understand the mining town’s 1850–1880 heyday.
12:00 PM–2:00 PM
Returning partner
Pond Farm Pottery: Bauhaus in the Redwoods
Guerneville · North Coast / Central Coast
Join a limited-capacity docent tour to Pond Farm Pottery, a National Historic Landmark tucked above Armstrong Redwoods. Doors Open participants will learn how Marguerite Wildenhain—the first woman to graduate from the Bauhaus as a Master Potter—made this hillside site her home, studio, and school for more than thirty years, carrying Bauhaus craft traditions into California.
2:00 PM–5:00 PM
Returning partner
Oakland Chinatown: Civil Rights, Resistance, and Resilience
Oakland · Bay Area
Begin inside the Chinese American Citizens Alliance lodge, established more than a century ago to fight for civil rights, then walk Oakland Chinatown with guides who connect the neighborhood’s Gold Rush-era origins to anti- Asian exclusion, community organizing, and present-day challenges. This Doors Open program pairs an open house, historic photographs, presentation, and neighborhood tour.
2:00 PM–3:30 PM
Returning partner
Leather, Land Use, and Queer Landmarking in SoMa
San Francisco · Bay Area
Explore San Francisco’s South of Market through the intertwined histories of LGBTQ leather culture, waterfront industry, redevelopment, nightlife, and preservation. This Doors Open walking tour asks how land use shaped bars, businesses, bathhouses, and events such as Folsom Street Fair, and how landmarking and public history now interpret a neighborhood central to queer activism.
Time TBA
Returning partner
Maybeck’s Berkeley Masterpiece Up Close
Berkeley · Bay Area
This Doors Open architectural tour brings visitors inside Bernard Maybeck’s celebrated First Church of Christ, Scientist in Berkeley. Rather than viewing the landmark only from the street, participants can study its inventive materials, craftsmanship, spatial drama, and hand-wrought details at close range—an unusually direct encounter with one of California’s great early twentieth-century architectural works.
Time TBA
New this year
Where the Black Panther Breakfast Program Began
Oakland · Bay Area
Stand at one of the most significant Black Power sites in the world: the location of the first Black Panther Party breakfast program, an early Panther meeting place, and the site of the funerals for George and Jonathan Jackson. Doors Open invites participants to connect a specific Oakland place to a global history of organizing, service, and liberation.
Time TBA
Returning partner
Women of the Black Panther Party, Center Stage
Oakland · Bay Area
Doors Open participants will visit the Black Panther Mini Museum at the Mural, a 1,000-square-foot museum in a private West Oakland home honoring the Black Panther Party and its Community Survival Programs. The experience centers Jilchristina Vest’s powerful mural and the often-overlooked women whose organizing, leadership, and community care shaped the movement.
Time TBA
New this year
San Jose’s Oldest Address and Victorian Turning Point
San Jose · Bay Area
Trace San Jose’s earliest urban history through two exceptional sites in one guided Doors Open experience. Begin at the 1797 Gonzales/Peralta Adobe, the city’s oldest surviving address and the last structure from El Pueblo de San Jose de Guadalupe, then cross the street to the 1850s Fallon House to see how early statehood reshaped the city.
10:00 AM–3:00 PM
New this year
Preview the Rebirth of Boyle Heights’ Queen of the Shuls
Los Angeles · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Doors Open offers a preview of the ongoing transformation of Breed Street Shul, the Boyle Heights landmark once known as the Queen of the Shuls. Guided tours connect the 1923 Byzantine Revival sanctuary, the 1915 rear building, and an extraordinary volunteer-led rescue to the Jewish, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, and multicultural histories of Los Angeles.
10:30 AM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Treasure Island’s Magic City Revealed
San Francisco · Bay Area
Discover Treasure Island beyond the Bay Bridge view. Built as the Magic City for the 1939–40 Golden Gate International Exposition, the island later served Pan American Airways flying boats and Naval Station Treasure Island. Doors Open visitors can join museum programs and walking tours linking Art Moderne buildings, exposition remnants, public art, and a landscape being transformed into a new neighborhood.
11:00 AM–3:00 PM
Returning partner
Julia Morgan’s Little Castle, Beyond the Lobby
Berkeley · Bay Area
Tour the Berkeley City Club, Julia Morgan’s 1930 clubhouse designed for twelve women’s clubs and affectionately known as the Little Castle. Doors Open participants can experience the 44,000-square-foot building’s remarkable mix of public and private spaces, including the ballroom, theater, library, meeting rooms, restaurant, bar, and elegant indoor swimming pool.
1:00 PM–4:00 PM
New this year
After 20 Years Closed: Oakland Auditorium Reborn
Oakland · Bay Area
See the newly reopened Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts, Oakland’s 1915 Beaux Arts auditorium, after two decades out of public use. This Doors Open tour highlights Stirling Calder’s monumental glazed terra cotta niches, the building’s memories of Elvis, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Grateful Dead, and its revival through a major public- private partnership.
Sept. 12–1315 events
9:00 AM–1:00 PM
New this year
Victorian Craft Still at Work at Blue Ox
Eureka · North Coast / Central Coast
Step inside Blue Ox Millworks, one of the last working Victorian job shops in the United States. Doors Open visitors can see historic craft in action through antique machinery, traditional tools, and hands-on trades including custom millwork, blacksmithing, ceramics, plasterwork, and other skills still used to repair, recreate, and preserve California’s historic buildings.
9:00 AM–12:00 PM
Returning partner
Shinn House at 150 and the China Camp Bunkhouse
Fremont · Bay Area
Celebrate 150 years of Fremont’s Shinn House with a Doors Open experience that links architecture, family life, horticulture, education, and the still-fragile China Camp bunkhouse. Small guided house tours reveal Japonisme, Craftsman, and Colonial Revival layers, while the grounds and exhibit share ongoing research into the Chinese workers whose labor sustained the ranch.
9:00 AM–10:00 AM
New this year
How Napa Wineries Became Icons
Napa · North Coast / Central Coast
Join architectural historian Christine Madrid French for a richly illustrated Doors Open lecture on more than 150 years of Napa Valley winery design. From stone cellars and gravity-flow production to grand estates and modernist landmarks, this program shows how architecture helped transform agricultural places into the enduring visual identity of one of the world’s premier wine regions.
10:00 AM–3:00 PM
New this year
Inside Napa’s 1901 Goodman Library
Napa · North Coast / Central Coast
Step inside the 1901 Goodman Library, designed by Luther M. Turton and now home to the Napa County Historical Society. During this Doors Open open house, visitors can explore the exhibition At Work: Industries that Built the Valley and learn how local residents have preserved and interpreted Napa County history since the Society’s founding in 1948.
10:00 AM–11:30 AM
New this year
Inside Napa’s Newly Restored Juarez Building
Napa · North Coast / Central Coast
Tour the Juarez Building at Napa’s Tulocay Cemetery, built in 1906 and reopened after a full 2025 renovation. Doors Open visitors will see how a former cemetery office that served for more than a century has been carefully renewed, with original features, historic photographs, and stories from the early days of the cemetery and Napa.
10:00 AM–12:00 PM
New this year
Rare Access to the Rosa Butron Adobe
San Luis Obispo · North Coast / Central Coast
Step inside a San Luis Obispo adobe not usually open to the public. Built between 1845 and 1860, the Rosa Butron de Canet de Simler Adobe anchors a Doors Open program on the women who lived there, the proposed Waterman Village affordable tiny home community, and a future park that will honor their stories.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
New this year
Open Doors at Sonoma’s Maysonnave House
Sonoma · North Coast / Central Coast
Visit the Maysonnave House for a Doors Open open house focused on local history, archival materials, and community storytelling. This stop offers a more intimate way to encounter Sonoma’s layered past through the documents, newspapers, newsletters, and place-based interpretation that help small historic sites connect residents and visitors to the people who shaped them.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
New this year
Bale Grist Mill: The 36-Foot Wheel Still Turns
St Helena, CA · North Coast / Central Coast
See one of the last operational water-powered grist mills on the West Coast. Built in 1846, Bale Grist Mill still grinds grain, and Doors Open tours will demonstrate the 36-foot water wheel while interpreting early Napa Valley life, agriculture, milling technology, and the everyday work that sustained nineteenth-century communities.
10:30 AM–12:00 PM
New this year
River Captains and Mansions of Napa Abajo
Napa · North Coast / Central Coast
Walk Napa Abajo with historian Kara Brunzell and uncover the neighborhood where steamboat captains, merchants, bankers, industrialists, and nineteenth-century families shaped Napa’s future. This limited, reservation-only Doors Open tour traces grand homes, river commerce, and architectural legacies that reveal how the Napa River connected the city to San Francisco and wider markets.
11:00 AM–3:00 PM
Returning partner
Verify time
California Nursery: Roses, Adobe, and Living Landscape History
Fremont · Bay Area
Explore the last twenty acres of the once-463-acre California Nursery Company, established in 1884. Doors Open visitors can follow interpretive paths through the historic rose garden, test orchard, last nursery block, packing shed area, 1840 Old Adobe, bungalow, and 1907 nursery office museum—an unusually rich landscape of horticulture, commerce, and California garden history.
5:00 PM–6:30 PM
New this year
Inside Sonoma’s 1842 Vallejo-Castañada Adobe
Sonoma · North Coast / Central Coast
Experience the 1842 Vallejo-Castañada Adobe, now a downtown Sonoma wine tasting and hospitality home rooted in early California history. Doors Open visitors can step into an adobe that embodies the region’s layered heritage, architecture, and sense of place, with the option to stay for a splash of wine after the open house.
Time TBA
Returning partner
Behind the Neon at Eureka’s 1939 Movie Palace
Eureka · North Coast / Central Coast
Doors Open goes beyond the theater seat at Eureka’s ultra-modern, neon-brilliant 1939 movie house, identified by the host as the last theater built by George Mann. Visitors can experience films on preservation, then tour rarely seen spaces including Mr. Mann’s apartment, the projection booth, and rooftop views of the blade sign and marquee.
Sat. 1:15–2:30 PM; Sun. 2:30–3:45 PM
New this year
Verify time
Bell Tower Access at Mission San Luis Obispo
San Luis Obispo · North Coast / Central Coast
Mission San Luis Obispo welcomes visitors daily, but Doors Open adds something special: access up to the bell tower, where five bells are still rung by hand. Participants can connect more than 250 years of mission history, art, architecture, and parish life with a behind-the-scenes ascent usually outside the standard tour experience.
Time TBA
Returning partner
Julia Morgan’s Monday Club, Open for One Day
San Luis Obispo · North Coast / Central Coast
The Monday Club of San Luis Obispo opens its historic clubhouse for a Doors Open program of docent tours, exhibits, expert talks on architect Julia Morgan, and a screening of a new documentary. Visitors can connect the 90-year-old building to the 100-year legacy of the women’s club and its continuing role in community service.
7:00 AM–5:00 PM
New this year
One District, Many Histories: Mission San Jose
Fremont · Bay Area
Spend a Doors Open day in Fremont’s Mission San Jose district, where multiple historic sites, museums, galleries, gardens, and tour options sit within a half-mile of one another. Visitors can build their own route through local history, including the Washington Township Museum, Old Mission San Jose, and special site-based interpretation throughout the district.
Sept. 19–205 events
11:00 AM–4:00 PM
New this year
Step Aboard Steinbeck and Ricketts’s Western Flyer
Moss Landing · Monterey / Sacramento
Board the fully restored Western Flyer, the 1937 sardine fishing boat made famous by John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts during their 1940 Sea of Cortez expedition. This limited Doors Open tour brings visitors into the wheelhouse, engine room, science lab, and restored working spaces now supporting marine research and education.
1:00 PM–4:00 PM
New this year
Pacific Grove’s 1881 Chautauqua Hall Opens Up
Pacific Grove · Monterey / Sacramento
Visit Chautauqua Hall, built in 1881 for the Pacific Grove Retreat Association as a chapel, meeting hall, schoolhouse, and storage facility. Doors Open guests can explore a California Register-listed community landmark that later served as Boy Scout headquarters, recreation facility, dance hall, and gathering place at the heart of Pacific Grove civic life.
1:30 PM–3:00 PM
New this year
Old East Davis: Before the University Farm
Davis · Monterey / Sacramento
Walk the oldest residential streets in the original Davisville plat with neighborhood docents. This Doors Open tour looks at Old East Davis before and after the University Farm, showing how early homes, architectural variety, careful upgrades, infill, and community stewardship preserve neighborhood character while accommodating change in one of Davis’s most historic areas.
Time TBA
New this year
Colfax Beyond Gold Rush and Rails
Colfax · Sierra Foothills
Look beyond Colfax’s familiar mining and railroad identity to the everyday people who built and sustained the town. Led by the Historic Colfax Downtown Association, this Doors Open walking tour highlights women business owners, immigrant laborers, orchards, fruit-packing, boarding houses, cafes, and the working histories that still shape downtown Colfax.
11:00 AM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Behind the Stone Walls of Gold Rush Mariposa
Mariposa · Sierra Foothills
Doors Open offers rare access inside the c. 1855 Nicholas Pendola Store and c. 1895 Rosa Pendola Canepa House in Bear Valley. This intimate tour explores hand-laid stonework, early commercial spaces, restricted interior areas, family stories, and the broader Gold Rush landscape of the Las Mariposas Land Grant associated with John C. Fremont.
Sept. 26–2723 events
9:00 AM–4:00 PM
New this year
Route 66’s Armstrong House Rock Shop
Newberry Springs · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Visit the 1936 Armstrong House in Newberry Springs, a Route 66 property that grew from homestead roots into a rock shop, real estate office, chamber stop, vendor hub, and future visitor center. Doors Open guests will encounter roadside business history, geology, community ambition, and the changing life of the 1926 Mother Road alignment.
9:00 AM–5:00 PM
New this year
Route 66 Preservation Road Trip: Foothill Icons
San Bernardino County · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Follow the Mother Road through San Bernardino County’s foothill communities on a Doors Open self-driving tour of preservation success stories. Staggered stops from Rancho Cucamonga to San Bernardino may include the Cucamonga Service Station, Wigwam Motel, Santa Fe Depot, California Theatre, Camp Cajon, speakers, property tours, and vintage dining suggestions.
10:00 AM–5:00 PM
Returning partner
Inside Neutra’s 1950 Modernist Office
Los Angeles · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Visit Richard Neutra’s 1950 Planning Professionals Building, the National Register-listed office he shared with Robert E. Alexander and later with his son and partner Dion Neutra. This Doors Open experience focuses on Neutra’s commercial architecture, midcentury Southern California design, educational programming, and the continued life of a landmark that also contains private apartments.
10:00 AM–5:00 PM
Returning partner
Step Inside Neutra’s Private Reunion House
Los Angeles · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Doors Open offers access to a Richard Neutra residence not open to the public. Completed in 1951, Reunion House features glass, natural materials, a water element, and Neutra’s signature spider leg, and later became home to Richard and Dione Neutra after the VDL Research House fire—making it an unusually personal chapter in the Neutra legacy.
10:00 AM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Riverside’s Salvaged-Material Masterwork
Riverside · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Visit Riverside Landmark #52, the Peter J. Weber House, built between 1933 and 1938 by Weber, lead designer for G. Stanley Wilson’s architectural office. Doors Open highlights the house’s eclectic Depression-era design, inventive engineering, and resourceful use of salvaged materials—an unusually personal statement of creativity, endurance, and architectural skill.
10:00 AM–2:00 PM
Returning partner
Michael White Adobe: Usually Closed, Open for Doors Open
San Marino · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Doors Open unlocks the Michael White Adobe, a hidden San Marino and Los Angeles County treasure typically closed to the public. Visitors can tour one of the region’s surviving nineteenth-century adobe structures, learn about its cultural and architectural significance, and hear how Friends of the Michael White Adobe are advancing restoration, education, and future use.
10:00 AM–2:00 PM
Returning partner
Special Access to the Michael White Adobe
San Marino · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Usually closed to the public, the Michael White Adobe opens for Doors Open as a rare nineteenth-century adobe survivor in San Marino and Los Angeles County. Visitors can learn about its architecture, community significance, restoration planning, Historic Structures Report work, and the effort to turn a fragile local landmark into a future educational resource.
11:00 AM–5:00 PM
New this year
Glendora’s First Firehouse and Hand-Built Castle
Glendora · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Celebrate Glendora history through two memorable local landmarks. Doors Open visitors can explore the Glendora Historical Society Museum, housed in the city’s first fire station, City Hall, and jail, then encounter Rubel Castle, the handcrafted landmark built with humor, imagination, and community effort—a pairing of civic origins and creative preservation.
11:00 AM–5:00 PM
Returning partner
Union Theatre’s Immersive Panorama World
Los Angeles · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Enter the Velaslavasay Panorama inside the 1910 Union Theatre, Los Angeles’ oldest purpose-built cinema. Doors Open visitors can experience Shengjing Panorama, explore the exhibition hall, theatre, and garden, and discover how 360-degree painted panoramas used light, sound, and three-dimensional elements to create an immersive “virtual reality” long before screens.
11:00 AM–5:00 PM
New this year
Her Pasadena: Women Remaking Home and Civic Life
Pasadena · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Tour Pasadena’s 1906 Blinn House, a Prairie-style residence transformed in the 1940s into the Women’s City Club of Pasadena. This Doors Open program uses architecture, original photography, period clothing, and stationed guides to explore how women adapted a grand domestic setting into a place for civic leadership, social engagement, and cultural life.
12:00 PM–4:00 PM
Returning partner
Santa Monica’s Little House with a Big Survival Story
Santa Monica · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Visit Santa Monica’s 1897 Shotgun House, a small survivor with an outsized preservation story. In this intimate, museum-like Doors Open tour, docents will explain how the house was moved three times to save it, how its LEED Gold adaptive reuse supports the Santa Monica Conservancy today, and how it reflects Ocean Park’s early development.
12:30 PM–3:30 PM
New this year
Exclusive Tour of Long Beach’s Bembridge House
Long Beach · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Step into the 1906 Bembridge House for a specialized Doors Open tour of Queen Anne Victorian architecture, original fixtures, ornate details, and family contents preserved across generations. Operated by Long Beach Heritage, the house offers a vivid, room-by-room glimpse into early twentieth-century Long Beach and the lives of its first and long-term owners.
1:00 PM–3:00 PM
Returning partner
La Casa Nueva at 100: Behind the Scenes
City of Industry · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Celebrate the centennial of La Casa Nueva with a Doors Open tour of spaces and materials not generally available to the public. Participants will see blueprints, letters, photos, carved wood, plaster, tile, and stained glass while learning about the Temple family, architect Roy Seldon Price, the building’s makers, and its Spanish Colonial Revival artistry.
Time TBD / see event details
New this year
Time TBD
Long Beach’s Landmark Church of Glass, Terra Cotta, and Sound
Long Beach · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Tour First Congregational Church of Long Beach, a 1914 Italian Romanesque Revival landmark with a 110-foot tower, terra cotta detailing, Joseph McKay stained glass, a mahogany sanctuary, and a large Möller organ. Doors Open interpretation connects architecture, craftsmanship, the 1933 earthquake, and later seismic lessons drawn from this beloved civic landmark.
Time TBA
Returning partner
Hollywood Heritage Archives: Attic Access
Los Angeles · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Go upstairs with Hollywood Heritage curators for a Doors Open look at rarely displayed archival materials inside the Lasky-DeMille Barn, associated with the first full-length feature filmed in Hollywood. Small groups will visit the attic archives, then tour the museum’s permanent collection to connect fragile documents and artifacts to the origins of the film industry.
Time TBA
Returning partner
Marion Davies Guest House: Hollywood’s Beachside Remnant
Santa Monica · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Explore the rehabilitated Marion Davies Guest House with Santa Monica Conservancy docents at the Annenberg Community Beach House. Doors Open visitors can connect the remaining pool and guest house to William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, Julia Morgan, Hollywood’s 1920s beach culture, original artifacts, and the estate’s public rebirth as a community beach house.
10:00 AM–12:00 PM
New this year
One Tour Only: Inside Hand-Built Rubel Castle
Glendora · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
With space limited to one guided tour of 25 people, this Doors Open visit offers rare access to Rubel Castle Historic District, a monumental artist-built environment constructed by Michael Rubel and friends over more than two decades. Explore the castle, courtyard, and Tin Palace museum, housed in Glendora’s last remaining citrus packing house.
10:00 AM–6:00 PM
New this year
Board the Queen Mary with Doors Open Access
Long Beach · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Use your Doors Open wristband for special discounted admission aboard the Queen Mary, the legendary ocean liner permanently berthed in Long Beach. Visitors can explore a landmark where maritime history, hospitality, dining, public tours, and popular legends continue to overlap, turning a former transatlantic vessel into one of Southern California’s most distinctive historic destinations.
10:00 AM–11:00 AM
Returning partner
Cal Edison’s 1931 Lobby and Balcony View
Los Angeles · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Step into the preserved 1931 Cal Edison lobby for a Doors Open look at original art, architecture, stonework, and craftsmanship approaching its centennial. Small groups will also be escorted to the fourth-floor balcony for a rare city view that links the building’s refined interior details to the movement and energy of downtown Los Angeles.
10:00 AM–11:30 AM
New this year
Little Tokyo’s 142-Year Story, Block by Block
Los Angeles · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Walk three blocks of Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo and encounter 142 years of immigration, cultural resilience, displacement, and community rebuilding. This Doors Open tour connects Japanese American neighborhood formation, wartime forced removal and incarceration, the Bronzeville era, redevelopment, the 1992 civil unrest, and current concerns about economic pressure and gentrification.
10:30 AM–1:30 PM
New this year
Garner House at 100: Restored Claremont Splendor
Claremont · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Celebrate the centennial of Claremont’s Garner House, a 1926 residence by Pasadena architect Arthur Munson and once the city’s largest single-family home. Doors Open visitors can see the music balcony, library, family spaces, and period-appropriate restoration completed in 2024, now interpreted by Claremont Heritage in its office and archive home.
1:00 PM–3:00 PM
New this year
Inside the Maloof Home and Craft Legacy
Alta Loma · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Tour the historic home and 5.5-acre campus of Sam and Alfreda Maloof, where architecture, landscape, furniture, and handcraft are inseparable. Doors Open participants can experience docent-led interpretation of the Maloofs’ artistic treasures, exhibitions, workshops, and the living legacy of one of California’s most influential craft traditions.
1:00 PM–5:00 PM
New this year
Alice Constance Austin’s Utopia in the Desert
Llano · L.A. / High Desert / Inland Empire
Walk the open desert landscape of the Llano del Rio utopian experiment with Positional Projects founder Karyl Newman. Drawing on images and plans discovered during research at Yale’s Beinecke Library, this Doors Open program interprets feminist architect Alice Constance Austin’s radical kitchenless residences where their foundations remain in place.
We Thank Our Generous Sponsors
Interactive Map of Participating Sites for 2026
DRAFT MAP – SUBJECT TO CHANGE
View the full-screen interactive map here