The San Marino City Council wasted no time last Wednesday evening granting Mimi and Nelson Jones their request that their home on 708 Winston Ave. be designated a local historical landmark.
The Jones’ Monterey Colonial Revival home was designed in 1929 by Roland Coate Sr., a prolific residential architect credited as a major proponent of the Colonial Revival styles, especially Monterey Colonial Revival. It was constructed in 1930.
Mimi and Nelson have lived in the home since 1988, and attended last Wednesday’s meeting to observe the council’s decision and share their history in the home.
Nelson said he went to grade school with Roland Coate’s son and sometimes saw the architect at the school.
“We’ve been in [the home] about 30 years, and it’s been a real pleasure to own that house,” Nelson said from the audience at the meeting. “I knew Roland Coate… he has done a number of very, very attractive houses in San Marino. We’d felt that we’d come by something pretty special here, and that’d we’d try to reflect that in some way or other and that’s why we’re here before you tonight applying for this designation.”
Later last week, Nelson shared that they’d always lived just blocks away from the house.
“I’d always loved the house,” he said. “So we came and rang the doorbell and asked if they owners would consider selling it to us. They said, ‘we’ll think about it.’ Then they said yes.”
The couple hired architectural historian Juliet Arroyo to assess the home’s ability to qualify for the designation. She explained the home’s special qualities and significance in the community during the meeting.
“The home is clad in brick and whitewashed from bottom to top,” Arroyo explained. “Some of the other Monterey Colonial style homes are just clad in stucco. It is very important not just to San Marino, but to this particular neighborhood in San Marino because [Cyril and Ruth Fitzgerald] built one of the first homes in the neighborhood.”
The home was also designed to accommodate the future growth of three heritage oak trees that were already on the property, part of what qualified the home to receive the local historical landmark designation, in addition to the home’s design, style and integrity. Criteria for integrity of a home is recognized by the National Register as “seven aspects or qualities that, in various combinations, define integrity and include: location; design; setting; materials; workmanship; feeling; and association,” according to Arroyo’s assessment documents.
“The reason we found it eligible as a local historic landmark, not just because Roland Coate is a master architect, and he’s also credited with helping create this style, he was also a practicing architect in the Pasadena/Los Angeles area,” she said.
Coates also had designed his own home in San Marino, Mimi said at the meeting, but it has since been torn down.
“That’s why I kept pushing Nelson to do this, because when we sell it, or it’ll be sold by our children, I don’t want it torn down. I don’t want another story put on it, I like it just as it is because it’s a landmark house.”
The San Marino City Council agreed, unanimously approving the local historic landmark designation for the home toward the end of the evening meeting, quickly followed by a round of applause.
