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Overview

This house project by Santa Barbara achitect Osborne Craig had a complicated and confusing history. As noted by historians Pamela Skewes-Cox and Robert Sweeney, the residence pictured in a drawing held by the Library of Congress was not for Mary McLaughlin Craig, Osborne's wife, but another client, Edith Chesebrough, for a site in Pebble Beach, CA, c. 1920. After the architect died in 1922, the surviving drawing was re-labeled the "Mary McLaughlin Craig House" by his widow in the hopes that it could be built for her in later life.

Building History

The architect James Osborne Craig (1888-1922) designed this residence for a single woman, Edith Saunders Chesebrough (born 09/08/1881 in CA-d. 09/08/1949 in San Mateo County, CA), who owned a lot at 3240 17 Mile Drive in Pebble Beach, CA. Her name was originally written on the drawing and erased. The granddaughter of Osborne and Mary McLaughlin Craig (1889-1964), Pamela Skewes-Cox, related the full history of the drawing to the author in 2023: "The drawing does indeed say 'House for Mrs. James Osborne Craig.' This stumped us for some years as Mary Craig never lived in a house by the sea. My original thought was that Osborne, her husband, designed it for her as something they might possibly build later in their lives. Then I found a copy of this exact drawing in an old issue of Architect and Engineer, 1922, and it said "House for Miss Edith Chesbrough." When I finally made a trip to the Library of Congress and saw the actual drawing, I could see the erasure: "Chesebrough" had been erased and my grandmother had put in her name! Soon after Osborne made this drawing, Edith Chesebrough met and married a very wealthy man and moved to Hillsborough, CA, cancelling her plans to build Osborne's house on the stunning property in Pebble Beach right on the ocean. My personal belief is that, after Osborne died in 1922, Mary herself erased "Miss Edith Chesebrough" and wrote in her name, thinking perhaps she would build this house for herself at some point. Of course, she never did and remained in her simple one story Spanish house in Montecito until her death in 1964." (See email from Pamela Skewes-Cox to the author, 03/02/2023.)

Chesebrough married William Clarkson Van Antwerp (1867-1938) on 12/25/1920, and scrapped plans of building her own residence at Pebble Beach. She was an avid golfer at Pebble Beach, and retained her property for some time, but never erected the house in the drawing. By 1930, Edith and William resided with her sister, Helen Percy Chesebrough (1884-1949) in a dwelling valued at approximately $100,000 at 680 Brewer Avenue in Hillsborough, CA. At $100,000, this house, with its three servants, would have been comfortably called a "mansion" by 1930 standards. (See Ancestry.com, Source Citation Year: 1930; Census Place: Hillsborough, San Mateo, California; Page: 6A; Enumeration District: 0026; FHL microfilm: 2339951, accessed 03/09/2023.)

Building Notes

Unbuilt.

Earlier information recorded in PCAD was not correct. According to Osborne and Mary Craig's granddaughter, Pamela Skewes-Cox: "This house was never built. The drawing dates to 1919. When James Osborne Craig (1888-1922) married Mary McLaughlin in November, 1919, they moved into a small board and batten house in Montectio [sic] (Santa Barbara) which Mary had purchased before her marriage to Osborne Craig. Osborne Craig died in March 1922. Mary Craig, who took over her husband's practice and became a designer in her own right, transformed her small board and batten house into a modest, one-story house in the Spanish Colonial style in 1928, and lived there until her death in 1964." Skewes-Cox has writen a book with Robert Sweeney on the Craigs, Spanish Colonial Style, Santa Barbara and the Architecture of James Osborne Craig and Mary McLaughlin Craig, published by Rizzoli Press, that has gone into two editions by 2023.

A previous PCAD entry also indicated that Mary McLaughlin Craig remarried and became "Mary Craig Skewes-Cox." This was not the case. The Craig's one daughter, Mary Osborne Craig, married Bennet Skewes-Cox in 1946, and she then became Mary Craig Skewes-Cox. Thank you to Pamela Skewes-Cox for her clarification of this relationship and her notes on the Mary Craig House Project. (See email from Pamela Skewes-Cox to the author, 11/26/2012.)

PCAD id: 17296