Meux Home Museum

The Meux Home, at Tulare and R Streets in downtown Fresno, is an 1889 Queen Anne Victorian that stands as one of the best-preserved examples of late 19th-century domestic architecture in California's Central Valley. The house was built for Thomas Meux, a Confederate Army surgeon turned California pioneer, and remained in the family for decades before being donated to the city as a museum.

The guided tours are detailed and genuinely interesting — the docents know their stuff about both the architecture and the social history of early Fresno. The interior is largely furnished with original or period-appropriate pieces: the parlour, dining room, and bedrooms give a vivid picture of how a prosperous Central Valley family lived in the 1890s. Combined with the nearby Old Fresno Water Tower, the Meux Home gives downtown Fresno its strongest connection to its pre-earthquake, pre-mall origins.

things to do museum
A story
Thomas Richard Meux built this house in 1889 when Fresno was barely a decade old. He was a Confederate Army surgeon who settled in California after the Civil War and became one of the city's founding citizens. The house he built was the most elaborate in early Fresno — its preservation gives the city a rare anchor to its origins as an agricultural boomtown.