California Heritage Museum

To present displays of American decorative and fine arts and to promote the passion that is collecting. The building that houses the California Heritage Museum’s exhibits is as interesting and unique as the exhibits themselves. In the late nineteenth century the renowned architect Sumner P. Hunt built the home for Roy Jones, son of the founder of Santa Monica, Senator John Percival Jones. City Trustees granted Jones a permit to dig a cesspool on April 16, 1894, marking the first step taken in the construction of the house. One of Sumner P. Hunt's earliest surviving buildings, the Roy Jones Home is designed in a style in transition from the elaborate Victorian Queen Anne Revival, to the simpler American Colonial or Georgian Revival style. Its beauty and grace were recognized from the start, as documented by The Outlook on May 26, 1894: "Five new residences, ranging in cost from $3,000 to $5,000, are now in the course of construction in Santa Monica. Those of Messrs. Roy Jones and Kennelly, on Ocean Avenue…are about completed. They are all handsome structures, and show that there is to be no deterioration in architectural styles in our growing city by the sea."