Offices & Research

La Jolla Cottage, 7846 Eads Avenue (Offices & Research)

In the early 1900s, La Jolla was a small beach-side town of a few dirt roads with horse-drawn carriages and about a hundred residential cottages, either rented or owned. Most cottages had one or two bedrooms with no plumbing or electricity. Typically, they were of simplistic exterior wood shingle construction and finished inside with wainscot and pine plank floors.

One such cottage was built in 1909 at 245 Prospect Street, utilized as a residence and rental for decades. The La Jolla Historical Society, which had been located in a small office at the Colonial Inn hotel on Prospect Street, acquired the cottage as the Society's new home after discovering the cottage would be demolished to make room for a three-story condominium. In 1981, the cottage was moved a few blocks north on Prospect and around the corner to its current 7846 Eads Avenue location by La Jolla developer Dewhurst & Associates. The expense of moving the cottage was provided by the Revelle Family, whose property the cottage now occupies, just down the hill from Wisteria Cottage. Once in place, plumbing and electricity was installed.

Over the past twenty-five years, in its adaptive re-use by the Society, the cottage has held archives collection files, staff offices of the executive director, office manager, archivist, and historian and accommodates a growing corps of volunteers. Work is located throughout four separate rooms, each retaining historical flavor with original wainscot and windows replete with "wavy" window glass — the effects of time on a century-old structure.