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# The bygone-era house is due for makeover Blast from the past: ‘Shotgun’ gets grant
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/the-bygone-era-house-is-due-for-makeover-blast-from-the-past-shotgun-gets-grant/
- Published: 2006-12-19T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T23:24:23.000Z
- Author: Melody Hanatani
- Tags: local, Mid-City, #archive-import

*A shot at history*

MID-CITY — A local conservancy group fighting to restore the city’s last known “shotgun” house has received a holiday bonus.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation recently awarded a $2,500 grant to the Santa Monica Conservancy to help in its efforts to rehabilitate and reuse a historic shotgun house originally situated in Ocean Park.

Shotgun-style houses are small buildings, usually one story, that are narrow and long in length with each of the rooms — typically about two or three — connected back-to-back. The distinguishing feature separating a shotgun-style house from a normal residence is the doorways all line up, so if a person fired a gun from the entrance, the bullet would travel through all the rooms and out the back exit undisturbed.

The grant will pay for half of a $5,000 historical assessment on the house, constructed around the 1890s, to provide the conservancy with a report on the original elements of the structure and how it should be rehabilitated in order to retain authenticity. The consultant will most likely be Peyton Hall of the Historic Resources Group in Los Angeles, said Sherrill Kushner of the Friends of the Shotgun House.

After the conservancy secures the remaining funds needed and after the consultant completes his assessment, which is expected to take a couple of months, members of the Friends of the Shotgun House will go before City Council to make a recommendation for a permanent location. The shotgun house, which measures 12 feet by 36 feet, is currently stored at the city lot at the old Fisher Lumber yard on Colorado Avenue and 14th Street.

Kushner expects the city staff will begin soliciting applications for prospective tenants to occupy the house in its new location.

The conservancy would like to open a preservation resource center in the house to hold archival material and distribute preservation information.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private non-profit organization that aims to preserve old and historic structures, awarded the grant to the conservancy for three main reasons — the grant committee was impressed with the extensive research conducted on the remaining shotgun houses in the city; the NTHP is familiar with the conservancy, having worked with the group on many occasions; and the grant committee was pleased with the selection of Hall and the Historic Resources Group.

“We’ve seen his name in many cases before,” said Melita Juresa-McDonald on Monday.

During the late 1800s, the shotgun houses were heavily concentrated in Ocean Park when it was still a separate city from Santa Monica.

“The shotgun houses were plentiful in the New Orleans area and the south,” Kushner said on Monday.“Elvis Presley was born in one.”

The houses, many of which were prefabricated, were shipped into the city in pieces via railroad and assembled on site. For the residents who could not afford the pricey mansions in the ritzy parts of Santa Monica, the shotgun homes were an attractive option. Its location near the ocean made for an even better deal as the configuration of the shotgun home gave way for a nice ocean breeze.

“Ocean Park had a lot more vacation housing and it wasn’t as a highbrow community as the city of Santa Monica,”said Joel Brand, past president of the Santa Monica Conservancy, on Monday. “A lot of people tend to focus on the houses of the very wealthy. There is an important place in preservation for houses like the shotgun house, which were much more of an every person kind of home.”

Brand likened the shotgun house of the late 1800s to the mobile homes of today. While many would not consider a mobile home as an architectural masterpiece, preserving a structure as old as the shotgun house is important, Brand said.

The home, originally located at 2712 Second St. was designated as a city landmark in 1999.

“It reflects the really important part of Santa Monica’s beach history,” Brand said.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/121906-05_01.jpg)

RE-ASSESS: The city’s last intact ‘shotgun’ house is transported to its current location in Mid-City. (Photo: Photo courtesy)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 19, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/121906.pdf?ref=smdp.com)