Exquisite, low altitude Dronescape footage of Marilyn Monroe's house courtesy of The Artery

Gentle reader,

Since we dove into the effort to protect Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home from a rushed and illegal demolition earlier this month, which has turned into a rare and encouraging instance of City Hall following the preservation community’s lead, something’s been bugging us.

Although we’ve seen older photos of the house—when Marilyn owned it in 1962 and when it was listed for sale in in the 2010s—the inward facing, sprawling property at 12305 5th Helena Drive is by its nature hard to understand from two-dimensional images or still aerial photos. And it’s been seven years since the last set of property listing images. What is the current state of the house we’re all trying to save?

Today, we’re delighted to present you with this artful, low altitude Dronescape footage, captured by The Artery yesterday in the sweet air over Brentwood, California.

It is the clearest and most revealing footage of the contested house, and places Marilyn’s home within its context in the secluded, tree-shaded culs-de-sac on the edge of a band of woodland, hemmed in from the south by an enormous, unfinished new house with no open space that is the sort of unlovely thing we all feared was planned if the demolition was approved.

Thanks to The Artery’s ascent, 12305 5th Helena Drive makes sense and feels like a home, even with the tall fence around the algae tinted pool, the badly hacked tree, the partially dismantled red tile roof and the spooky swing in the lawn. It just needs a human’s touch to come alive again. [note: the footage also reveals a hint about the possible new owner, explained on the updated original newsletter about this preservation campaign.]

If you love this footage and want to see more flights above and around Los Angeles, be sure to subscribe for alerts when new Dronescapes are published on The Artery’s YouTube channel. Some of our most beguiling landmarks have been featured, from Angels Flight Railway to the BENDIX neon tower, Bullocks Wilshire to the Broadway Theatre District.

And if you look deeper, you’ll see a special series of short documentaries of significant structures threatened with demolition or redevelopment, or that have been vandalized or neglected by slumlord owners. These include The Flax Artist’s Materials Building (burned), Wilshire Professional Building (a protected landmark, heavily tagged), The Morrison Hotel (illegally gutted), Lincoln Heights Jail (a protected landmark, tagged and marked for destruction by City Hall) even The Los Angeles Times HQ (a protected landmark, except the part the confessed racketeer councilman carved off for his developer donors).

We’re honored to count The Artery among our preservation pals, the loose network of devoted Los Angeles lovers who give of themselves and share their talents to protect places that matter—even though the city usually does all it can to thwart these efforts.

Just this week, The Artery’s Dronescape of the 1909 Arenz Block on fire became the centerpiece for Nathan Marsak’s R.I.P. Los Angeles post calling on the city to preserve the beautiful brick facade that survived the latest suspicious fire in a warehouse on Downtown’s Bong Row.

Having met the talented individual behind The Artery’s Dronescape channel, we are 65% certain that he is a human being and not an angel. But you’d never know it from the elegant, artful way his soaring eye takes in the city.

Here’s to all the L.A. angels who bring their particular talents to battle for the soul of Los Angeles. Joining together to fight the forces that only know how to tear beautiful things down and profit has turned frustration and grief into comfort. We might not save everything, but we celebrate these special places, document their beauty and decay, and ensure that they are not forgotten.

The effort to preserve the last home of Marilyn Monroe—and to find the name of the mysterious buyer who seeks to destroy it—is shaping into a fascinating campaign, and you can follow along on our dedicated Substack newsletter and on Nathan Marsak’s R.I.P. Los Angeles.

We welcome a new L.A. angel to the cause: the living memory of Miss Monroe herself. It’s the love and respect that people all over the world have for this native daughter, and the concern they feel for the sweet and beautiful place where she sought to put down roots, that is shining a light on all the land use corruption, illegal demolitions and citizen intimidation that continue to emanate from Los Angeles City Hall.

Could hers’ be the landmark battle that brings reform at last? We think it might!

New tours are now listed through Christmas week, and we’d love to see you for a walk or a bus adventure—join us, do!

yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

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Psst… 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. 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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UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS

• Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue Walking Tour (Sat. 10/7) • Eastside Babylon Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 10/14) • The Birth of Noir: James M. Cain’s Southern California Nightmare Bus Tour (Sat. 10/21) • The Real Black Dahlia Crime Bus Tour (Sat. 10/28) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 Walking Tour (Sun. 10/29) • The Run: Gay Downtown History Walking Tour (Sat. 11/4) • Downtown L.A. is for Book Lovers Walking Tour (Sat. 11/11) • Alvarado Terrace & South Bonnie Brae Walking Tour (Sat. 11/25) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop Walking Tour (Sat. 12/2) • Highland Park Arroyo Walking Tour (Sat. 12/9) • Miracle Mile Marvels & Madness Walking Tour (Sun. 12/17) • Human Sacrifice: The Black Dahlia, Elisa Lam, Heidi Planck & Skid Row Slasher Walking Tour (Tues. 12/26)