Marston House

This guide to the Marston House in San Diego starts with a number: the San Diego Union reported an eighteen-thousand-dollar building permit for George White Marston's new house on New Year's Day, 1905, a sum that bought most Americans a modest cottage. It follows architects William Sterling Hebbard and Irving Gill as their design grew past its own budget, and the family moving in with plaster dust still in the rooms. Gill's early plans had called for Tudor half-timbering before the design changed course. Stand at the front door and look at the plain, unornamented walls he chose instead.