Douglas Alfred Shirley, a graduate of Texas Christian University and the University of Michigan, was a football coach and president of Hereford College before moving to Canyon. At West Texas State Normal College, later West Texas State Teachers College, he served as professor of physics and head of the physics department from 1913 to 1923, then as the first associate dean from 1923 to 1942, while also chairing the athletics committee and being elected three times president of the Texas Intercollegiate Athletics Association. Active in Canyon civic life, he was a member of the Canyon City Chamber of Commerce, a charter member of the Canyon Rotary Club, and a Mason and Shriner. He retired as dean in 1949 because of ill health and died later that year. In 1916, he and his wife, Willena M. Shirley, built this two-story frame and brick home on lots bought from Canyon City founder L.G. Conner, using plans purchased from the Craftsman Bungalow Company of Seattle, Washington, and construction by Jim and Sterling Coffee. The house featured grouped windows, a full-length porch, a prominent dormer, and exposed rafter tails, and at the time it bordered mostly open prairie to the southeast with a view of the plains. During the 1917 to 1918 school year, Georgia O'Keeffe, then a faculty member at West Texas State and later one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, rented the upstairs bedroom and boarded with the Shirleys. From her window, she studied west Texas sunrises and the houses across the street, subjects she depicted in Roof with Snow and House with Red Sky.