Scoop: Marilyn Monroe's House Was Almost Demolished in 2023 (by the previous owners)
Gentle reader,
It’s Marilyn Monroe’s birthday weekend, which seems the perfect time to share a scoop with you about plans to demolish her pretty Spanish house at 12305 5th Helena Drive in Brentwood.
We’ve got a scoop because, contrary to the bizarre allegations made in the property owners’ petition for writ of mandate asking a judge to halt the landmarking process and let them commence demolition, we are not conspirators in league with the City of Los Angeles and the preservation community to deprive them of property rights, and we have no vested interest in the house being landmarked.
What we are is historians, journalists and civic activists, and it’s our job to dig deeper and expose what’s really going on when something about Los Angeles makes no sense.
Even after the mystery of who currently owns and was seeking to demolish Marilyn’s house was solved— something that took weeks of sleuthing by independent historians and the mainstream press—there remain a lot of questions about the demolition permit that was issued. We’re grateful that Marilyn’s fame is sparking a conversation about how significant buildings can be lost, despite the strong landmark protections enshrined in L.A.’s municipal code. It is long past time to enact reform for LADBS procedures that benefit developers at the expense of cultural history.
On 1/18/2024, the Cultural Heritage Commission held a hearing to determine if Marilyn’s house should be considered for landmark status. The no-longer-anonymous owners, neighbors Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank, testified about their objections to it being declared a protected monument. That testimony is below.
Addressing the CHC and the public, Brinah Milstein stated for the record: “We have lived next door for eight years. In the eight years that we have lived next door, we have seen the property change owners two times. We have watched it go unmaintained and unkempt. We purchased the property because it is within feet of ours and it is not a Historic-Cultural Monument.”
From her remarks, one could reasonably assume that Marilyn’s house had been flipped repeatedly by absentee owners who did not look after the property, which made life unpleasant for Ms. Milstein and her family.
But 12305 5th Helena Drive was not in any way abandoned and neglected in the months leading up to its purchase and attempted demolition by Milstein-Bank.
To quote their own petition for writ of mandate, it was in the throes of a "spasm of activity." Then owners Daniel C. Lukas and Anne Jarmain had hired a construction expediter, commissioned an architect and were waiting for the city to sign off on plans for a major remodel, including landscaping the half-acre site.
While the existence of this large scale redevelopment project is clearly visible in the LADBS Permit and Inspection portal, nobody else tracking the Marilyn Monroe house demolition controversy has reported on it. Curious to know what Lukas-Jarmain intended, we filed a public records request to obtain the plans submitted to the City and related correspondence.
From these public records, a timeline and narrative take shape—one that has been conveniently omitted from the current owners’ arguments against landmarking and in their legal fight with the City seeking to reinstate their demolition permits.
5/16/2016 - Roy Bank and Brinah Milstein buy the house next to Marilyn Monroe’s house (12306 6th Helena Drive)
5/31/2017 - Daniel C. Lukas and Anne Jarmain purchase Marilyn Monroe’s house using the Glory of the Snow 1031 LLC to obscure ownership (12305 5th Helena Drive)
7/9/2017 - Luxury real estate blogger “Yolanda,” a real estate professional who at the time was still anonymous, names Lukas-Jarmain as the buyers in the off-market deal and warns them against demolishing Marilyn’s house.
4/27/2018 - Lukas-Jarmain commission an architectural survey of the existing structures from M & M & Co., prepared by Gregory M. Amorosa, L.A.
4/19/2020 - Lukas-Jarmain commission a soils report from Feffer Geological Consulting and their rep goes back and forth with the LADBS Grading Division to get construction approval.
3/4/2022 to 12/22/2022 - four separate building permits work their way through the LADBS system. Christine Brown, Director of the Plan Check Division of Crest Real Estate, walks the project through the approval process with the Bureaus of Engineering and Sanitation and LADBS; Crest puts it on their projects map.
Building application 22014-20000-01003 submitted for 2nd floor addition, basement addition and major remodel of the existing house.
Building application 22010-20000-01065 submitted for a new two story ADU with rec room.
Site grading application 22030-20000-01571 submitted for an addition to the main house, a new garage and new accessory living quarters (ALQ) and rec room.
Pre-inspection application 22030-20000-01576 submitted for addition and remodel of the existing house, garage, pool and spa, grading and retaining walls.
During 2022, Brown was in regular contact with the City and made requested corrections until the Helena Residence was nearly construction ready.
12/16/2022 - Brown emailed plan check engineer Starr Chen, “Can you please provide your first available appointment to review this project?”
12/20/2022 - Brown followed up “I think to save time, let's do a zoom call. I am still working on finalizing clearances so we can save the in-person meeting as our final meeting once we are ready.”
12/22/2022 - Brown and Chen connected on Google Meet, at the start of which Brown emailed Chen a Dropbox link to a 103-page PDF of “correction set” project plans. This interaction triggered an update to three of the online permits.
But then everything stopped. There would be no further movement on redevelopment of the 5th Helena property. Then, after seven months:
7/10/2023 - in an off market sale, 12305 5th Helena Dr. is conveyed from Lukas-Jarmain’s Glory of the Snow 1031 LLC to the newly formed and deliberately opaque Glory of the Snow 1031 Trust.
7/31/2023 - an application for a demolition permit is submitted for the house and outbuildings, and one to backfill the swimming pool.
Despite the house being a tourist attraction with its own location tag on social media, no Marilyn Monroe fan, no Brentwood neighbor, no postal worker or news reporter claims to have seen a posted Notice of Demolition, which is a legal requirement before obtaining a permit to tear down structures built before 1980.
9/5/2023 - The New York Post breaks the story that the house is threatened with immediate demolition. Many people and organizations that care about Marilyn Monroe, historic landmarks and fair play in Los Angeles City Hall come together in pursuit of a shared aim: to save this house!
You can track the chronology of the Marilyn demolition and landmark nomination drama on our dedicated newsletter page, here.
The current and immediate past owners of Marilyn Monroe’s house are very rich and very discrete. All information that’s been shared about their respective ownership and plans for the property has been deliberately massaged and filtered. But from building permits and documents released in response to our public records request, a different and more compelling story emerges about the relationship between these two wealthy families. And there are more questions than answers.
About a year after Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank arrived on 6th Helena, Daniel C. Lukas and Anne Jarmain bought 12305 5th Helena Dr. For five years, they were absentee owners, but the property was not derelict. Drone footage, Google streetview and fan images show that the property was well maintained. It was also used as a location for the fictionalized Marilyn bio-pic Blonde.
If you hate the thought of Milstein-Banks demolishing Marilyn’s house for a bigger lawn, then you’re really going to be ill when you see what Lukas-Jarmain were up to.
On Valentine’s Day 2022, Nathalie Aragno, Principal at Studio William Hefner, a luxury home design firm with offices in L.A. and Montecito, submitted bid renderings for the proposed Helena Residence to her clients Lukas-Jarmain. The French-trained architect reimagined Marilyn’s cozy red tile and stucco Spanish Colonial Revival hacienda as a hulking Neo-Classical shell of precast stone and painted brick veneer, with rooftop balustrades and useless storm shutters.
Under this plan, the 2624 sq. foot residence on its half-acre lot would have been built up to 10,164 sq. feet of enclosed living, covered patio, basement and garage space, including maid’s quarters, elevator, wine cellar, library, hair salon and sauna.
A classic Southern California home would have been replaced by something more suitable for suburban Washington D.C. or maybe Istanbul.
The grounds were to be extensively landscaped with Manzanilla olive trees, Bay Laurel, Santa Cruz Island Buckwheat, Dwarf Rosemary and African boxwood. As for Marilyn’s classic kidney-shaped pool, it would be filled in, replaced by a new rectangular lap pool and spa.
And under the nonsensical LADBS policies that allow a property owner to keep a small portion of an existing building and describe a completely new structure as a “remodel,” this enormous compound would not have been classified as a demolition of the original 1929 structure, nor would it have required signs and notification.
In a plausible alternative timeline, 12305 5th Helena Drive was demolished sometime in 2023 by its owners Lukas-Jarmain, and the shocking news was broken by a distressed fan who arrived at the famous cul de sac to find a bulldozer blowing through walls.
But something changed.
Instead of the “remodel” breaking ground, seven months went by with no additional permitting activity. Then quietly, and off market, the property was sold.
Missing from the record is an explanation for why Lukas-Jarmain would walk away from what appears to have been their dream house, the product of countless hours of work with a large team of architectural, landscape and planning professionals.
The modest price bump, $8.4 Million from the $7.25 Lukas-Jarmain paid in 2017, hardly seems sufficient. Maybe Milstein-Bank paid the project costs, too. Such a transaction between private parties would not be a public record.
Instead of a long, noisy construction project culminating in a huge new house with next door neighbors, Milstein-Bank bought their way to peace and quiet on an acre of land in the dense heart of Brentwood.
And then instead of being satisfied with that, they set out to demolish one of the most beloved and culturally significant properties in the world.
But it appears that neither Milstein-Banks nor LADBS provided any of the public notifications that are required when seeking to demolish a property more than 45 years old. When asked in September, planning staff in Traci Park’s Council District 11 and the Brentwood Community Council’s land use representative tell us they were not notified.
The days ticked away with no opportunity for community input, while next door at 12306 6th Helena, plans were made to clear the lot.
After news of the pending demolition made headlines around the world, emergency protective action was taken by the council office in response to overwhelming public outcry. Milstein-Bank then hired lawyers and filed legal papers accusing private citizens and preservation non-profits of conspiracy, all in their campaign to erase Marilyn’s house from the earth.
Can they do it? The next few weeks might tell.
If you care about Marilyn Monroe, historic landmarks and fair play in Los Angeles City Hall, and want to be a part of this exiting preservation battle, then come to Judge James C. Chalfant’s Department 85 courtroom in the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 4 at 9:30am.
Judge Chalfant will be hearing the property owners’ argument for an injunction to halt the landmarking process so that they can proceed with their demolition plans, and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s office will counter with the City’s defense.
Normally we’d post a link to the City’s opposition papers. But while they appear on the docket along with several available declarations also filed on 5/21/2024, and are the basis for a City News Service report, they have been filed as confidential and thus are not accessible to the public. This is weird, and it’s is possible that this is due to a clerical error. We’ll continue to try to get the opposition, and will update this post when and if we do.
Update 6/3/2024: And here is the City’s opposition, which is not actually confidential, and worth reading. We are particularly intrigued by the City Attorney citing the laws against piecemealing of multiple parcels to avoid proper environmental review (page 19-20), as we have been asking Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez to apply this standard to a proposed two-lot development in Hollywood, including a parcel on which a historic RSO bungalow court was demolished without permits. If it’s good enough for Marilyn, it’s good enough for Waring Avenue!
But for now, if you’re interested in the City’s response to efforts to allow demolition of Marilyn’s house, your best bet is to go to the Mosk Courthouse on Tuesday morning. Dress sharp; Marilyn would.
Yours for Los Angeles,
Kim & Richard
Esotouric
Our work—leading tours and historic preservation and cultural landmark advocacy—is about building a bridge between Los Angeles' past and its future, and not allowing the corrupt, greedy, inept and misguided players who hold present power to destroy the city's soul and body. If you’d like to support our efforts to be the voice of places worth preserving, we have a tip jar and a subscriber edition of this newsletter, vintage Los Angeles webinars available to stream, in-person tours and a souvenir shop you can browse in. We’ve also got recommended reading bookshelves on Amazon and the Bookshop indie bookstore site. You can share this post to win subscriber perks. And did you know we offer private versions of our walking and bus tours for groups big or small? Or just share this link with other people who care.
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This is a wild and crazy story. People would like to know the truth, I think.