Photos document the building and landscaping of a home at 1959 Las Tunas in Santa Barbara, California. The photos start with the family visiting the undeveloped property, continue with the building of the house and the landscaping, and end years after the garden and grounds have matured and the children have grown older. The album also contains photos of the family and friends at an event at the house (possible housewarming) and includes a photo of landscape architect Lockwood de Forest, Jr. (However, the Ussher house is not listed in his commissions in the Architecture and Design Collection, Coll. 0000184B, UCSB.)

Neville T. Ussher (1901-1963) was born in Van, Turkey, where his parents were missioniaries. His father, physician Clarence Ussher, witnessed the Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915 and wrote a book documenting it: An American Physician in Turkey: A Narrative of Adventures in Peace and War. Neville emigrated to the United States in 1918. He was educated at Yale in the 1920s and became an internist and a specialist in disorders of the spine. The 1930 federal census for Santa Barbara shows him living with his wife Marjory and three children on La Vuelta Road in Montecito and in the 1940 census they were living at 1959 Las Tunas Road and had been since at least 1935.

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Collection is open to researchers.