Pistachio House sits behind a commercial building on State Street and gives away almost nothing from the sidewalk. You reach it through a private paseo, a tiled tunnel with lanterns strung overhead that runs back from the street and opens into the residence. Jeff Shelton designed it, and it was commissioned and built in 2002 by the owners of the Santa Barbara Pistachio Company.

Shelton's buildings are among the most photographed in downtown Santa Barbara, and this is one you have to be let into. He works in tile, iron, and plaster, and the house is a catalogue of all three. Glazed ceramic panels in yellow and green run the length of the balconies. The exterior stair treads are tiled. The plaster is sculpted rather than flat, curving into built-in banquettes and arched niches that read more like something carved than a set of rooms.

Spanish Colonial Revival is the starting point and everything after that is his. Hand-forged iron turns up as stair rails, window grilles, light fixtures, and a mast on the roof terrace. The interiors run terra cotta underfoot with beamed ceilings above, and the green French doors open onto terraces on nearly every side.

The residence is three bedrooms and three baths across roughly 1,700 square feet, tri-level with an elevator. The upper floors look over the tile rooftops of downtown to the Riviera and the mountains behind it, and the other direction to the harbor and the wharf.

It is a mixed-use property, which is part of what makes it rare. The residence is private and self-contained with its own entrance off the paseo, and the commercial building fronting State Street comes with it, bringing the total improvements to roughly 4,157 square feet. Gutierrez and State is the gateway to the Funk Zone, walkable to the wine trail, the waterfront, and everything on lower State.