AGUAJITO OAKS, Monterey — October 30, 2026. A historic adobe home in Monterey’s Aguajito Oaks neighborhood, known as the private residence where child star Shirley Temple married Charles Alden Black in 1950, has reportedly changed hands for $2.45 million. The sale was reported by Mansion Global following a spring real-estate listing that brought national attention to the neighborhood’s architecture and Hollywood history.
The property is at 150 Littlefield Road, a private residential address. This is an architectural-history and property-market report, not an invitation to visit, enter or photograph a private home without permission. California58 has not independently inspected the deed record or identified the private buyers.
A 1940 adobe built for a prominent California family
The one-story residence was designed in 1940 by Carmel architect Robert Stanton for James Byers Black and his wife, Katherine. Black had served as president of Pacific Gas and Electric and later became its chairman. The family used the residence as a weekend retreat and called it “Mesita.”
The home’s architectural character combines whitewashed adobe walls, a red-tile roof, heavy wooden features and a courtyard garden. Photographer Manny Espinoza, who photographed the property for its April 2026 marketing campaign, describes 20-inch-thick adobe walls, beamed ceilings, original hardwood floors and a traditional loggia. The residence was featured on the cover of Sunset magazine in 1941, according to his account and earlier local reporting.
The wedding that made the address famous
On December 16, 1950, Temple married Charles Alden Black, the son of the property’s owners, in front of the house’s living-room fireplace. Temple was 22 and had recently divorced her first husband. The couple had met while she was in Hawaii; their marriage continued until Charles Black’s death in 2005.
These wedding details are supported by accounts from the period and later reporting, including the San Francisco Chronicle’s 2005 retrospective, and material cited in Mansion Global from Temple’s autobiography. A private family’s dwelling thereby became part of the wider cultural history of Monterey.
What happened in the 2026 real-estate market?
According to the photographer, listing agent David O’Neil of Sotheby’s International Realty brought the property to market in April 2026 for $2,450,000 after renovation and professional photography. The photographs attracted coverage from several national design and property publications.
In its subsequent report, Mansion Global said the house sold for $2.45 million, with O’Neil representing the listing side and Sandra Schirmer and Wally Sayles representing the buyers. It also said the sellers had purchased the property in 2022 for approximately $1.81 million. Those are the publication’s reported transaction figures, not California58’s independently audited property records.
The home has roughly 2,180 square feet of interior space, according to the reported listing. The buyers and sellers were not publicly identified in the Mansion Global account, and there is no editorial reason to speculate about their identities or plans for the house.
Why the story matters beyond a sale price
For Aguajito Oaks, the property is an example of how modestly scaled California adobe architecture can carry a layered local story: design in 1940, a Sunset feature in 1941, a widely remembered wedding in 1950 and a fresh wave of attention in 2026. The transaction’s headline figure does not, by itself, establish that all homes in the neighborhood have appreciated by the same amount.
This article is separate from our neighborhood wildfire-planning analysis and road-maintenance reports. Those concern public safety and infrastructure rather than historical architecture and a reported property transaction.
Sources and verification note
Mansion Global, sale report and agent comments; Manny Espinoza Photography, September 25, 2026: architecture and the April listing; KION, May 10, 2022: house history and Robert Stanton.
Aguajito Oaks News original local-history and real-estate follow-up, October 30, 2026. The reported sale amount is attributed to Mansion Global. Exact deed recording, ownership details and future building modifications have not been separately verified; no photographs from a private listing have been reproduced without permission.
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