Time

When living with my parents I use to be only a few blocks away from Heritage Square. When ever we drove past it to get to the 110, I would gaze upon the tall spire of the church and see houses of different colors and would believe my parents were jipping me of some close by Disneyland. And for all those years you would see a fence and short of breaking in, it just never seemed like a place you can just waltz in and observe. So in the years it simply escaped my conscience. But recently I went through some crazed crusade to see everything that was in town, breaking in if so need be (my plan was to approach from the river, belcava and all). Lucky for me Heritage Square has for awhile been offering tours, so I could put the wire cutters away. At 10 bucks for what I believe was an hour tour of great facts about the houses and Highland Park history it is definitely worth it. The tour guides even dress in period appropriate clothing to boot. For photos, it seems that they don't mind people walking around the outside of the houses for free since you have to pay for the tour inside the old train stop station. On top of that it's usually just the register person and a tour guy inside so on the outside you can probably do some good guerrilla photo taking and just don't be brazen. If you decide on the tour I personally have taken it twice and while the tour includes the inside of the houses I had separate experiences with both. First time they allowed no photography whatsoever and trust me some of the stuff inside is amazing from some houses being fully furnished and amazing architecture to some being almost gutted but offer a nice decay/ glory gone look, it's like getting two settings in one. But on the second trip they let us take photos but with no flash, so I went nuts. I think it may depend on the tour guide you may get or simply ask if you can without flash, I mean it's not paintings so I see no harm in it. A definite must go in this neighborhood.