Visiting the Stevenson House

The Stevenson House is open! Guided tours are offered on Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 10:00AM. Cost: $10.00 per person age 18 or older. Tickets can be purchased at the house 15 minutes before the tour .  For updates check the website for the Monterey State Historic Park.

A State Park Guide  will greet the Stevenson House visitors and will bring to life Stevenson’s occupancy of the House during his stay in Monterey in the autumn of 1879, and relate the other many notable uses of the building during its long history.

The Stevenson House is a two-story adobe built during the Mexican Era of Monterey. Rooms in the House hold a large number of Stevenson artifacts, including portraits, Stevenson family furniture, and personal items. Lovely gardens occupy the House grounds. The gardens are open year round 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The House is located at 530 Houston Street, Monterey, California.

In nearly two centuries of existence the Stevenson House has sheltered families, government officials, artists, writers, and fishermen. At one point it was operated as a rooming house, called the French Hotel. In the fall of 1879 Robert Louis Stevenson stayed for a short time. He had come to court his future wife, Fanny Osbourne. Stevenson was poor, in frail health and unknown; in his days in Monterey he was cared for by friends he had made there. In Monterey Stevenson wrote “The Pavilion on the Links,” a murder mystery set in Scotland, and composed the notes for  the essay “The Old Pacific Capital,” a wonderfully evocative essay describing Monterey and the Peninsula of that time.