Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home has been saved from destruction after a year-long battle.
The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Wednesday to designate the Spanish Colonial-style home as a historic and cultural monument to protect it from being razed by its current owner.
“We have an opportunity today to do something that should have been done 60 years ago. There is no other person or place in the city of Los Angeles as iconic as Marilyn Monroe and her Brentwood home,” Councilmember Tracy Parker said before the vote said in his speech.
Park, representing Council 11th The property’s district added that she plans to file a motion to assess tour bus restrictions in Brentwood after neighbors complained about unnecessary traffic around the property. She also floated the idea of moving the house to a location more accessible to the public.
“Losing this piece of history, the only home Monroe ever owned, would be a devastating blow to historic preservation and to a city where less than 3 percent of its historic designations are associated with the legacy of women,” Parker said.
The battle over the 5 Helena Road home has been brewing since last summer, eventually morphing into a broader discussion about what exactly is worth preserving in Southern California — an area filled with architectural wonders and Old Hollywood haunts Place, celebrity legend and gossip abound.
Monroe fans claim the home is an indelible part of Hollywood history; the actress bought the house in 1962 for $75,000 and died of an apparent overdose six months later. The last house I lived in.
The owner claims that the house has been remodeled many times over the years and is nothing like what it once was. They also said it had become a nuisance for the community as tourists and fans took photos outside the hotel.
The saga began when heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband, reality TV producer Roy Bank, purchased the property for $8.35 million and immediately made plans Demolition plan. They own the property next door and want to expand their property.
An aerial view shows the Brentwood house where actress Marilyn Monroe died.
(Mel Bouzad/Getty Images)
The couple received permission but soon faced opposition, with historians, Angelenos and Monroe fans joining in to protest the planned demolition. Rep. Park said she received hundreds of calls and emails urging her to take action.
The next day, she held a press conference, wearing red lipstick and short blond hair, to pay tribute to Monroe and deliver an impassioned speech urging the City Council to designate the home as a landmark.
Over the next few months, the landmark application slowly advanced, gaining approval first from the Heritage Commission and then from the Planning and Land Use Management Commission.
Meanwhile, Milstein and Bank are prohibited from demolishing the homes. Milstein addressed the Heritage Commission directly in January in an attempt to influence its decision.
“We watched it become unmaintained and neglected. We purchased the property because it was just a few feet away from us. It was not a historical and cultural monument,” she said at the time.
They sued the city in May in an effort to block the landmark designation process, claiming officials were unconstitutional in designating the home as a landmark and accusing them of a “backdoor conspiracy” in trying to preserve a house that didn’t qualify as a landmark. standards for cultural monuments.
“Not a single item in the house contained any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe spent a day in the house, not a piece of furniture, not a chip of paint, not a rug, nothing,” the lawsuit states.
A judge denied the accusation in June, calling the lawsuit “a thinly veiled motion to win so that they can demolish the house and eliminate the historic cultural monument issue,” ABC 7 reported.
The City Council vote was originally scheduled for June 12, but Park requested a postponement, citing recent court decisions and pending litigation, as well as ongoing discussions between the City Attorney’s Office and the property owners.
