For the second time in two years, Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood dwelling has been saved from destruction.
Final summer time, the Spanish Colonial-style hacienda was saved by the 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.
Choose James C. Chalfant upheld the Metropolis Council’s choice — and the house’s monument standing — in a quick filed Tuesday.
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 combating for the correct to tear the property down. On the opposite are legions of historians, Angelenos and Monroe followers, who declare the Twenties hang-out, the place the actor died in 1962, is an indelible piece of movie star historical past.
The feud stirred up a bigger dialog on what precisely is price defending in Southern California, a area loaded with architectural marvels and Outdated Hollywood haunts swirling with movie star legend and gossip.
Followers declare the home, positioned on fifth Helena Drive, is simply too iconic to be torn down. Monroe purchased it for $75,000 in 1962 and died there six months later, the one dwelling 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 Marilyn Monroe died in Brentwood.
(Mel Bouzad / Getty Photographs)
The owners declare it has been reworked so many instances over time, 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 deal with for footage, though the one factor seen from the road is the privateness wall.
“There’s 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 broaden 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 a whole lot of calls and emails urging her to guard it. In September 2023, she held a press convention dressed as Monroe — vibrant crimson lipstick, bobbing blond hair — urging the 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. Just a few weeks later, Milstein pleaded her case to the fee.
“We have now watched it go unmaintained and unkept. We bought the property as a result of it’s inside ft of ours. And it’s not a historic cultural monument,” she mentioned on the time.
The couple sued the town just a few 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. Choose 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 provided to maneuver the house to allow them to broaden their very own property with out destroying Monroe’s, may attraction the decide’s choice.
