Marilyn Monroes L.A. home escapes demolition — | Real Estate news

For the second time in two years, Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home has been saved from destruction.

Last summer time, the Spanish Colonial-style hacienda was saved by the L.A. City Council, which voted unanimously to designate the home as a historic cultural monument, halting its impending demolition. This time around, it was rescued by an L.A. Superior Court decide, who rejected a legal problem from the owners claiming the town’s landmark designation violated their proper to raze the residence.

Judge James C. Chalfant upheld the City Council’s choice — and the home’s monument standing — in a temporary filed Tuesday.

It might 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 Bank, who are combating for the correct to tear the property down. On the other are legions of historians, Angelenos and Monroe followers, who declare the Twenties hang-out, where the actor died in 1962, is an indelible piece of superstar 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 Old Hollywood haunts swirling with superstar legend and gossip.

Fans declare the home, situated 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 only home 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.

The owners declare it has been reworked so many occasions over the years, with 14 different house owners and over a dozen renovation permits issued over the last 60 years, that it bears no resemblance to its former self. Some Brentwood locals take into account it a nuisance, since followers and tour buses flock to the deal with for photos, even though the only 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 Bank claimed in their lawsuit.

Milstein, a rich real estate heiress, and Bank, a actuality TV producer with credit including “The Apprentice” and “Survivor,” purchased the home for $8.35 million in 2023 with plans to tear it down. They own the property next door and hoped to increase their property.

The pair obtained demolition permits from the Department of Building and Safety, but once their plans turned public, an outcry erupted.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents L.A.’s eleventh council district where the home is situated, said she acquired tons of of calls and emails urging her to shield it. In September 2023, she held a press convention dressed as Monroe — shiny pink lipstick, bobbing blond hair — urging the City Council to declare it a landmark.

The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission began the landmark utility course of in January 2024, barring the house owners from destroying the home in the meantime. A few weeks later, Milstein pleaded her case to the commission.

“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 said at the time.

The couple sued the town 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. Judge Chalfant denied the declare, calling it an “ill-disguised motion to win so they can demolish the home.”

Milstein and Bank, who have beforehand supplied to transfer the home so they’ll increase their own property without destroying Monroe’s, might appeal the decide’s choice.