By Daily Press staff
The Santa Monica Conservancy’s third lecture in its annual lecture series highlights a unique and endangered historic building known as the Shotgun House, built in the 1890s and designated as a Santa Monica landmark in 1999. The lecture, to be held on Thursday, May 11, at 7 p.m. at the Santa Monica Public Library, will explore the house’s historical significance to the development of Santa Monica. The presentation will be given by graduate students in USC’s historic preservation program, taught by professor and conservancy board president Ken Breisch. The Shotgun House has been the subject of their case study in historical research.
A modest and small-scale structure, the wood-frame, one-story house has generated community support as its survival has been threatened more than once, conservancy board members said. Marked for demolition in 2002, the house has survived two temporary moves, one to the Santa Monica Airport and in November of 2005 to a vacant piece of city-owned land. The Santa Monica Conservancy is working hard to find a permanent home and to have the house restored in order to maintain it as a cultural resource with a new creative public use.
The Shotgun House derived its name from the fact that the design of the simple structure — one-story, one-room wide and two or three rooms deep, one behind the other — would allow a gunshot to enter through the front door and exit the back door without ever touching a wall. Around the turn of the century, more than 200 such cottages inhabited the area close to the beach, marking a time in Santa Monica’s history when laborers lived in them and tourists used them as temporary housing. The affordable and quick set up of the houses made them popular. As a result, the Shotgun House chronicles an important part of Santa Monica’s history as it grew from its identity as a frontier town into a prosperous city, conservancy board members said.
The lecture takes place in the second floor multi-purpose room of the new Main Library at Sixth Street and Santa Monica Boulevard. Parking is $1 per hour in the library parking structure. For more information call the Santa Monica Conservancy at (310) 485-0399 or visit www.smconservancy.org. This program is not sponsored by the Santa Monica Public Library. ‘Love Letters’ open to the public
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 10, 2006. Read the original PDF.