Smith worked primarily in Santa Barbara, where his Spanish Colonial Revival designs defined the city's architectural character after the 1925 earthquake prompted a comprehensive rebuilding campaign. His Palo Alto commissions are rarer and therefore more notable. The Pettigrew House demonstrates Smith's ability to adapt his style to different settings: the same white walls, clay tile, and wrought iron that evoke Andalusia in Santa Barbara work equally well on a residential street in Palo Alto, where the climate is similar and the Spanish-Mexican heritage provides a legitimate historical context.

Spanish Colonial Revival architecture enjoyed enormous popularity in California during the 1920s and 1930s, reflecting both nostalgia for the state's mission-era past and an aesthetic preference for Mediterranean forms suited to the climate. Smith was the movement's most refined practitioner, and the Pettigrew House shows his hand in details that lesser architects would have simplified: the proportions of windows to wall, the placement of arches, the way the building steps from one story to two without awkwardness. The house survives as a residential property, its architectural significance recognized but its daily function unchanged.

The Pettigrew House belongs to a Palo Alto that existed before the tech industry transformed the city. In 1925, Palo Alto was a university town surrounded by orchards, and a Spanish Colonial house on Cowper Street was an expression of California lifestyle rather than California wealth. The house predates Silicon Valley, Hewlett-Packard's garage, and every technology company that would eventually make Palo Alto real estate among the most expensive on Earth. It endures as a reminder of the city's pre-digital identity -- a place where architecture was influenced by Spain and Mexico rather than by the latest product launch.