The final home of Marilyn Monroe – and the only residence she ever owned independently – will remain standing for now after Los Angeles officials intervened to block the property’s demolition.
The news that the new owners of 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, where Monroe died at age 36, filed for demolition permits had attracted widespread outrage. Los Angeles city councilwoman Traci Park said she received hundreds of calls urging her to save the Spanish colonial-style house in the city’s Brentwood neighborhood.
“Unfortunately, the department of building and safety issued a demolition permit before my team and I could fully intervene and get this issue resolved,” Park said at a news conference last week, adding that there was a need for “urgent action”.
I’ve never heard anybody talk about where Marilyn Monroe lived in my life. If the property was important for preservation why didn’t the city already own it? Was there just supposed to be some general understanding that it wasn’t allowed to be demolished? I would think it’s just an empty shell at this point.
It’s pretty common to still allow private ownership of historic places, but with additional rules associated with them.
The silly part is if this mattered, why wasn’t this already part of that? I suppose it’s a social inertia of a kind, and this will likely resolve by getting it recognized as a historic building.
The silly part is that anyone considers a this a historic place. What happened in Marilyn Monroe’s mansion that makes it worthy of keeping? She’s historic, the house she happened to own is not.