When it comes to real estate, buying the house next door is rarely a bad move. Except, perhaps, when it used to be Marilyn Monroe’s.
Last summer, Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank, a couple living in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood, decided to acquire the final home of the blonde bombshell, where she died in 1962. After city officials granted the new homeowners a demolition permit, a groundswell of fury formed online and local organizers pushed to label the $8.35 million abutting property, which has changed hands over a dozen times since Monroe’s death, a historic cultural monument in the hopes of preserving it.
The Los Angeles City Council then began a designation process, staying the demolition permit. On Wednesday, the pause became indefinite when Los Angeles City Council members voted unanimously to classify the home as a historic cultural monument. “If the home was legitimately worthy of designation, it should and would have happened a long time ago," Peter C. Sheridan, a lawyer for the couple, writes in a statement to Town & Country.
Despite facing increasing heat from preservation activists and neighbors, many buyers are still calling in the bulldozers on significant property. “I'm shocked when a house isn't torn down, because everyone tears them down,” says Tina Trahan, the L.A.-based art collector who snagged the Brady Brunch house from HGTV (yes, the cable network).
After actor Chris Pratt and his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger bought a 1950s Los Angeles house designed by famed architect Craig Ellwood last year, the couple razed it to make room for a new two-story house. Although the Hollywood power couple found themselves on the receiving end of negative press, Ellwood’s daughter, Erin Ellwood, told me she understands “all sides” of the to-raze-or-not-to-raze debate.
“The house wasn't a great representation of his work,” she says. “Just because it has a name like Craig Ellwood or it has a name that nobody knows, how do you measure all this?”
For Monroe’s house, the equation for determining its significance isn’t straightforward. The starlet only owned the home for a few months before she tragically committed suicide, and several courts determined that New York was her residence and domicile at the time of her death, according to Sheridan. Milstein and Bank have subsequently launched a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles alleging "backroom machinations" in its efforts to push for historic cultural landmark designation.
Trahan says if she had known the one-story, four-bedroom house was on the market, she would’ve spent millions to ensure it wouldn’t turn into manicured grass. Adrian Scott Fine, who serves as the president and CEO of the Los Angeles Conservancy, believes the house is an important symbol of Monroe’s connection to the film industry.
“She talked about the house, she shared about the house, she was decorating the house,” Fine says. “It was a place that she was really intending to settle and establish some roots in Los Angeles.”
Part of the calculus for buyers who move forward with these tear-down projects is that enjoying the property lasts longer than being on the receiving end of mean tweets. But for others, the idea of hiring a crisis P.R. whiz and experiencing neighbor animosity—even for a few months—is enough to scare them away from purchasing land. “I remember I had a beautiful piece of property that frankly should have sold for much more than it did,” says Cody Vichinsky, a realtor on Long Island's East End. “It probably took up to a 50% haircut of market value based upon the land because nobody wanted to tear it down even though you could.”
In Malibu, an oceanside Tadao Ando abode owned by Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, is on the market for $39 million. While the property is one of few homes designed by Ando, a much-celebrated architect, in America, the pad has sat on the market for months. Some have speculated that the house is in such a state of disrepair—it reportedly doesn’t have necessities like a bathroom, plumbing, or electricity—that buying it would mean knocking it down, a thought that has likely scared away potential purchasers given the architect’s status in tony circles.
On Long Island, one of the first homes designed by acclaimed architect Marcel Breuer, who designed the former site of the Whitney Museum on the Upper East Side, was recently torn down, reportedly to make way for a new home. Many homes from decades ago no longer fit today’s buyers’ tastes, according to Esteban Gomez, a Hamptons-based realtor who sells many significant homes. “A lot of these homes by these architects were built in a scale that by today's standards is quite small. You have more landscape, more greenery, or more nature, I suppose, in relation to the size of the house,” he says.
Some sellers of significant homes prioritize offers from those who promise to preserve them, ensuring lifelong invites for buyers and sellers to the neighborhood block party. Take Ryan Murphy, the uber-producer behind hit shows like Feud: Capote vs. the Swans and a seasoned real estate investor. Murphy and his husband David Miller have bought numerous significant homes over the years, including a Richard Neutra-designed house currently on the market for $33.9 million.
“These sellers believe these homes are pieces of art and should be treated as such. So when it comes to selling them, they're really looking for what we call the next ambassador for the home,” Aaron Kirman, the house’s listing agent, tells me.
While the modern movement to protect significant homes dates back decades, social media has made it easier to whip up a frenzy and draw attention to likely teardowns. It can be hard to separate genuine local opposition from blind followers of the preservation movement.
Ultimately, the public’s memory when it comes to these battles is short-lasting, with many moving on quickly to other landmark melees. In the Hamptons alone, numerous modernist homes have been leveled to make room for McMansions, despite public outcry at the time, and the hubbub over these homes has waned.
“Dirt is much more valuable or expensive these days than the actual structure that it sits on,” says Gomez. “It's a game of numbers unfortunately. But that's the cold reality.”
Andrew Zucker works at a production company in New York City. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Financial Times, and Air Mail, among other publications.
