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 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 choose, who rejected a authorized problem from the householders claiming town’s landmark designation violated their proper to raze the residence.
Decide James C. Chalfant upheld the Metropolis Council’s choice — and the house’s monument standing — in a short filed Tuesday.
It could possibly be the ultimate chapter to a years-long saga with loads of Hollywood twists and turns. On one aspect are the householders, Brinah Milstein and Roy Financial institution, who’re preventing for the best 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 actor died in 1962, is an indelible piece of celeb 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 celeb legend and gossip.
Followers declare the home, situated 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 residence she ever owned by herself. The phrase “Cursum Perficio” — Latin for “The journey ends 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 Pictures)
The householders declare it has been reworked so many occasions through the years, with 14 totally 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 think about it a nuisance, since followers and tour buses flock to the tackle for footage, although the one factor seen from the road is the privateness wall.
“There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture, 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.
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 number of weeks later, Milstein pleaded her case to the fee.
“We have watched it go unmaintained and unkept. We purchased the property because it is within feet of ours. And it is not a historic cultural monument,” she mentioned on the time.
The couple sued town just a few months later, accusing them of unconstitutional actions and “backdoor machinations” in attempting to protect a home that doesn’t qualify as a historic cultural monument. Decide Chalfant denied the declare, calling it an “ill-disguised motion to win so they can demolish the home.”
Milstein and Financial institution, who’ve beforehand provided to maneuver the house to allow them to develop their very own property with out destroying Monroe’s, might enchantment the choose’s choice.
