For the second time in two years, Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood residence has been saved from destruction.
Final summer season, the Spanish Colonial-style hacienda was saved by L.A. Metropolis Council, which voted unanimously to designate the home as a historic cultural monument, halting its impending demolition. This time round, it was rescued by an L.A. Superior Court docket decide, who rejected a authorized problem from the owners claiming the town’s landmark designation violated their proper to raze the residence.
Decide James C. Chalfant upheld the Metropolis Council’s resolution — and the house’s monument standing — in a quick filed Tuesday, Sept. 2.
It may very well be the ultimate chapter to a years-long saga with loads of Hollywood twists and turns. On one facet are the owners, Brinah Milstein and Roy Financial institution, who’re preventing for the suitable to tear the property down. On the opposite are legions of historians, Angelenos and Monroe followers, who declare the Nineteen Twenties hang-out, the place the actress died in 1962, is an indelible piece of superstar historical past.
The feud stirred up a bigger dialog on what precisely is value defending in Southern California, a area loaded with architectural marvels and Previous Hollywood haunts swirling with superstar legend and gossip.
Followers declare the home, positioned on fifth Helena Drive, is just too iconic to be torn down. Monroe purchased it for $75,000 in 1962 and died there six months later, the one residence she ever owned by herself. The phrase “Cursum Perficio” — Latin for “The journey ends right here” — was adorned in tile on the entrance porch, including to the property’s lore.
An aerial view of the home the place actress Marilyn Monroe died is seen in Brentwood, California.
(Mel Bouzad/Getty Photos)
The owners declare it has been transformed so many occasions through the years, with 14 completely different homeowners and over a dozen renovation permits issued over the past 60 years, that it bears no resemblance to its former self. Some Brentwood locals contemplate it a nuisance, since followers and tour buses flock to the tackle for photos, regardless that the one factor seen from the road is the privateness wall.
“There may be not a single piece of the home that features any bodily proof that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day on the home, not a chunk of furnishings, not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” Milstein and Financial institution claimed of their lawsuit.
Milstein, a rich actual property heiress, and Financial institution, a actuality TV producer with credit together with “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” purchased the house for $8.35 million in 2023 with plans to tear it down. They personal the property subsequent door and hoped to develop their property.
The pair obtained demolition permits from the Division of Constructing and Security, however as soon as their plans grew to become public, an outcry erupted.
Councilmember Traci Park, who represents L.A.’s eleventh council district the place the house is positioned, mentioned she acquired tons of of calls and emails urging her to guard it. In September 2023, she held a press convention dressed as Monroe — vivid crimson lipstick, bobbing blonde hair — urging Metropolis Council to declare it a landmark.
The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Fee began the landmark utility course of in January 2024, barring the homeowners from destroying the home within the meantime. A couple of weeks later, Milstein pleaded her case to the fee.
“We now have watched it go unmaintained and unkept. We bought the property as a result of it’s inside toes of ours. And it’s not a historic cultural monument,” she mentioned on the time.
The couple sued the town a couple of months later, accusing them of unconstitutional actions and “backdoor machinations” in making an attempt to protect a home that doesn’t qualify as a historic cultural monument. Decide Chalfant denied the declare, calling it an “ill-disguised movement to win to allow them to demolish the house.”
Milstein and Financial institution, who’ve beforehand supplied to maneuver the house to allow them to develop their very own property with out destroying Monroe’s, may attraction the decide’s resolution.
