Among Long Beach’s oldest and most beautiful examples of California Craftsman architecture, the Elizabeth Milbank Anderson House and Carriage House were built in 1911 and have housed the Long Beach Museum of Art since its founding in 1950.

The Craftsman mansion was built in 1911 by The Milwaukee Building Company as Elizabeth Milbank Anderson's summer home. Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (1850-1921) was a New York native, a supporter of the arts, a notable philanthropist during the Progressive Era, and a public health advocate who inherited wealth from her banker father, Jeremiah Milbank (1818-1884), who was also one of the founders of Borden Condensed Milk Company.

She began spending part of her year in Southern California, initially staying in Pasadena (around 1906), then Los Angeles (around 1907), and eventually building this sizable California Bungalow mansion in Long Beach.

Built on the Long Beach bluffs roughly 400 feet north of the Pacific Ocean, the three-story California Craftsman mansion and accompanying two-story Carriage House represent an early phase in the city’s residential development, a style popular for residential housing from 1905-1915. Craftsman-style architects and designers sought to create dwellings that married beauty and function by utilizing materials such as wood, stone, and brick in a natural-appearing state. Both the Anderson and Carriage Houses demonstrate how these ideals were put into practice with structural elements, particularly exposed roof beams, rafters, and corbeled brackets, as well as natural materials like clinker brick on the exterior first floor, rugged wood shingles on the second floor, and numerous windows to allow views and sunlight.

Five years after Anderson’s death, the house became Long Beach’s first social, athletic, and beach club, known as the California Casa Real Club, and was used for about three years. Thomas A. O'Donnell (1870-1945), one of California's "Big Four" oil entrepreneurs, owned the property from 1929 to 1944. He built his fortune investing in the large oil fields near Coalinga, CA, after 1902, and was a longtime associate of oil magnate Edward Doheny. During World War II, the US Navy requisitioned the building and used it as its Chief Petty Officers' Club. It was purchased by the City of Long Beach in 1950 for a Municipal Art Center, and in 1957, it was designated as the Long Beach Museum of Art.

Serving as a highly visible and distinctive reminder of Long Beach's history and culture, both Craftsman structures were designated as historic landmarks by the City of Long Beach Cultural Heritage Commission in 1990.