The Street Seen: California Heritage Museum
2612 Main Street @ Ocean Park
The Roy Jones House formerly located at the corner of Ocean Avenue and Washington Avenue, is moved in 1977 to its present location, where it and the Trask - Kyte house form Heritage Square on the southwest corner of Main St and Ocean Park Blvd.
The California Heritage Museum is located in the First Roy Jones House.1 The house was built in 1894 for Roy Jones (1869 – 1947)2 - the son of Senator John Percival Jones (1829 - 1912) and his first wife Hannah Cornelia Conger Jones (1836 - 1871).
Originally located at 1007 Ocean Ave, one of Sumner P. Hunt's earliest surviving buildings, the house is designed in a style in transition from the elaborate Victorian Queen Anne Revival to the simpler American Colonial or Georgian Revival style.
The Jones House is sold to retired Utah hotelman Gustavus Sinclair Holmes (1857 – 1935) in 1903. Holmes lives in the house until the mid-1930s. Later, the residence is converted into a rooming house and allowed to deteriorate. It is saved from demolition and relocated to its current site in 1977,3 and designated as a City Landmark in 1979.
Today it houses a museum4 of American fine arts and crafts with exhibitions that promote the history and cultures of the people that comprise our California community. Photographs of the Jones family and the moving of the house to Main St are among the museum’s permanent exhibits.
In front of the museum is a bronze bust of Senator John Percival Jones, and on a nearby rock, a 1985 bronze plaque memorial to four Masons involved in the early history of Ocean Park.
The Second Roy Jones house, built in 1907, is the first property on Adelaide Drive. The house is designed by his brother-in-law and noted architect Robert Farquhar.
Roy Jones (1869 – 1947). Son of Senator John Percival Jones. Founder and officer of the Bank of Santa Monica. Jones works on the City Charter and is influential in the early economic and political development of the City. Robert F. Jones and Roy Jones form the Santa Monica Land Company. Jones helps organize the Ramina Corporation - a developer in northern and southern California. Roy marries Pauline Williamson in NYC in 1893. They have a son, Gregory Jones (1894 – 1978), and a daughter, Dorothy Jones Reynold Boden (1895 – 1985).
The California Heritage Museum, a not-for-profit 501 (c) (3) organization, has a 50-year lease on the property from the City.