After a year-long battle, Marilyn Monroe's Brentwood home was saved from destruction.
On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to designate the Spanish Colonial-style residence as a historic cultural monument, protecting it from being razed by its current owners.
“We have the opportunity to do something today 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 home in Brentwood,” Councilwoman Traci Park said in a speech before the vote.
Park, who represents the 11 council members.th The mayor of the district, where the property is located, added that she is planning to introduce a motion to evaluate restrictions on tour buses in Brentwood after neighbors complained about unwanted traffic around the development. She also floated the idea of moving the house to a location where the public could access it more easily.
“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% of historic designations are associated with women's heritage,” Park said.
The battle over the house on 5th Helena Drive has been brewing since last summer, evolving into a broader discussion about what exactly is worth protecting in Southern California: a region filled with architectural wonders and Old Town sites Hollywood filled with legends and celebrity gossip.
Monroe fans claimed that the residence is an indelible piece of Hollywood history; The actress bought the house for $75,000 in 1962 and died there of an apparent overdose six months later, making it the last home she ever occupied.
The owners claimed that the house has been remodeled so many times over the years that it is nothing like what it was before. They also said it has become a neighborhood nuisance as tourists and fans flock to take photos outside the property.
The saga began when heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband, reality TV producer Roy Bank, bought the property for $8.35 million and immediately made plans to demolish it. They owned the property next door and wanted to expand their assets.
An aerial view shows the Brentwood home where actress Marilyn Monroe died.
(Mel Bouzad/Getty Images)
The couple obtained a permit, but soon ran into opposition, as historians, Angelenos, and Monroe fans joined together to protest the planned demolition. Councilwoman Park said she received hundreds of calls and emails urging her to take action.
The next day, she held a press conference, sporting red lipstick and short blonde hair in a nod to Monroe, and gave an impassioned speech urging the City Council to designate the house as a landmark.
In the following months, the historic application moved forward slowly, first receiving approval from the Cultural Heritage Commission and then the Land Use Planning and Management Committee.
Meanwhile, Milstein and Bank were prohibited from demolishing the house. Milstein addressed the Cultural Heritage Commission directly in January in an effort to influence its decision.
“We have seen how it became unmaintained and unmaintained. We bought the property because it is a few meters from ours. And it is not a historical-cultural monument,” he said at the time.
In an attempt to stop the landmark designation process, they sued the city in May, alleging that officials acted unconstitutionally in their efforts to designate the house as a landmark and accusing them of “backdoor machinations” in trying to preserve a house. It does not meet the criteria for the status of a historical cultural monument.
“There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day in the house – not one piece of furniture, not one piece of paint, not one piece of carpet, nothing,” the lawsuit says.
A judge rejected the claim in June, calling the lawsuit a “thinly disguised motion to win so the house can be demolished and the historic cultural monument issue removed,” according to ABC 7.
The City Council vote was originally scheduled for June 12, but Park requested a postponement, citing the recent court decision and pending litigation, as well as ongoing discussions between the city attorney's office and the property owners.
