The 1836 boarding house where Robert Louis Stevenson spent an ill winter — and where a typhoid epidemic killed the family downstairs in 1879.
530 Houston St, Monterey, CA 93940
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission; guided tours offered Friday and Saturday at 10:00 AM and 3:30 PM — arrive a few minutes early.
Access
Limited Access
Two-story historic adobe with period staircases. Limited accessibility on upper floors.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1836 · Robert Louis Stevenson Residence 1879 · California Historical Landmark #352 · National Register of Historic Places
The building at 530 Houston Street was constructed around 1836 for Rafael González, then the customs administrator at the Port of Monterey. The structure used chalk rock and adobe brick set in limestone mortar, with a wood-frame second story added in subsequent years — a construction method common to the Spanish Colonial period in Alta California.
From roughly 1856, merchant Juan Girardin ran a general store on the ground floor and rented the upper rooms as lodgings, eventually advertising the property as the French Hotel. Stevenson arrived in Monterey in August 1879, broke and in poor health after crossing North America by emigrant train to be near Fanny Osbourne, a married American woman he had met in France. He moved into a room at the French Hotel and worked on essays and fiction during his stay, completing drafts of The Amateur Emigrant and beginning material that would eventually feed into Treasure Island.
The autumn of 1879 also brought a typhoid epidemic to Monterey. Juan Girardin's son died on July 1, 1879; Manuela, his mother and the hotel's caretaker, contracted the disease while nursing the children and died on December 21, 1879. Stevenson departed for San Francisco in late 1879 following Fanny's divorce.
In 1937 the property was donated to the State of California by Edith van Antwerp and Mrs. C. Tobin Clark, who had purchased and preserved it. It is now managed as part of Monterey State Historic Park, holds a large collection of Stevenson papers and personal effects, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (added 1972) as California Historical Landmark #352.
Sources
The paranormal accounts at the Stevenson House focus on the upper floors where both Stevenson and the Girardin family lived and died. A female figure in dark clothing — described most often as a woman in a black dress — has been reported by visitors and by the building's curator moving through the nursery and adjacent rooms. The accounts converge on Manuela Girardin, who died in the building following her effort to nurse two sick children during the 1879 typhoid epidemic.
Auditory phenomena are the other consistent thread. Visitors describe soft coughing sounds from an upstairs room, attributed locally to Stevenson, whose health was poor during his stay — he suffered from what he called a near-fatal illness during the winter months. Faint voices and footsteps in empty rooms have also been documented across multiple visitor accounts on paranormal reporting platforms.
An unexplained medicinal odor — described as carbolic acid, a disinfectant used in the 1800s sickroom — has been reported independently by multiple visitors in the nursery. The combination of illness, death, and the famous writer's documented physical suffering have made this building a consistent entry in Monterey's haunted-history coverage.
Notable Entities
Free 45-minute guided tours cover the building's history from its construction in 1836 through Robert Louis Stevenson's 1879 stay, the Girardin family who occupied the lower floors, and the museum's collection of Stevenson manuscripts, personal effects, and period furnishings.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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