We're in the lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles for trying to landmark Marilyn Monroe's house

Gentle reader,

The owners of Marilyn Monroe’s house at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood have just sued the City of Los Angeles to halt the process of a pending City Council vote to declare the property a protected Historic-Cultural Monument, alleging improprieties in how the process played out.

We’re in it!

No, we haven’t been sued by the billionaires who bought the house in an off-market deal and obtained a demolition permit, despite no proper public notice being placed in the public view. But they do mention us quite a bit in their Petition for Writ of Mandate, which you can read here.

Since it’s now a matter of public record, you should know that we were the first members of the preservation community to reach out to the office of Councilmember Traci Park, alerting her planning staff to the immediate demolition threat to Marilyn Monroe’s home. Our initial public post, with updates serving as a Marilyn Monroe house demolition process timeline, can be found here.

According to the billionaires next door, our motives for doing this were personal financial benefit. A dozen times in the 115 page writ, we’re described as “for profit” or “mercenary” tour operators.¹

The fact is that we’ve never given a tour about Marilyn Monroe or any celebrity of her mainstream allure, nor have we taken groups into the Brentwood community. It’s hard to think of anything we’d like to do less. Esotouric is a niche, preservation-focused enterprise dedicated to illuminating the lives of obscure people and lesser known places in Los Angeles, mainly in Downtown and early streetcar suburbs like Angeleno Heights and Westlake. Our tours reflect our personal passions, and we’re just not deeply interested in big stars or in 21st century Brentwood.

But we are interested in the proposed demolition of Marilyn Monroe’s home, because it’s a stunning example of the City and a property owner having failed to follow LADBS policies for obtaining a demolition permit for any property more than 45 years old: a public notice is required to be posted on site by the applicant, and notification provided to the City Council office and Neighborhood Council by LADBS.

But because apparently neither property owner nor LADBS followed these rules, the world only learned of the pending demolition when some anonymous angel in City Hall tipped off the New York Post that a demolition plan check had been approved!

We have no financial interest in Marilyn Monroe, but we admire her as an actress and person, and as an exemplar of a native Angeleno who rose from poverty and neglect to a place of honor and lasting fame. Marilyn’s cool.

As independent preservationists deeply concerned with public corruption around land use, we see the threat to this famous home—and the recent demolition by Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger of the neighboring Zimmerman House—as a rare opportunity to have real journalists cover the real world manifestations of this corruption, and for the wider public to see how the system has broken down, so that only the very rich benefit from all Los Angeles has to offer, and everyone else scrambles around in the dregs trying to survive.

It’s a perfect example of how lousy our billionaire owned Los Angeles Times has become that we had to have a legal pal pull the court filings this morning to even learn that we are cited in them. That’s because “luxury real estate” (!?) writer Jack Flemming's story about the writ of mandate fails to mention the newsworthy and disturbing allegations against us, the Los Angeles Conservancy, Hollywood Heritage and others, while highlighting the property owners’ gripes.

Jack, you could have called us, if you wanted to get the story right.

Anyway. If you actually read the filing, as we have, you’ll see we have nothing to be ashamed of. Exhibit E (pages 53-55) is a forwarded email from our Richard Schave to Councilmember Traci Park’s Planning Liaison Sean Silva, sent on Wed, Sep 6, 2023 at 1:22 PM. In it, Richard alerts Sean to the existence of a pending demolition permit—something that the surprised council office should have been informed of “at least 30 days prior”—linking to an urgent blog post just published by Nathan Marsak on RIP Los Angeles and pasting in important LADBS information, because the Building and Safety website was down.

The owners of Marilyn Monroe’s house quote a portion of Richard’s email, apparently as evidence of some kind of conspiracy to deprive them of their property rights. This is bolded in yellow by someone preparing the exhibits.

Not quoted is the final paragraph in this brief email, which makes clear Richard has no expectation that the councilmember will be interested in taking such action.

And why would we have such an expectation, after our heartbreaking experience with Traci Park’s predecessor Mike Bonin, which resulted in the needless destruction of a National Register eligible giant Chili Bowl shaped restaurant for a vacant lot?

Unlike Mike Bonin, Traci Park agreed that Los Angeles history matters, and that places people care about are worthy of trying to preserve and protect. We’re grateful to Ms. Park and her staff for acting as quickly as they did, to respond to an emergency demolition threat which should by City ordinance to have given concerned citizens and officials plenty of time to act.

We wish every demolition with serious protocol lapses received this type of attention. It would be the difference between housing and homelessness for so many vulnerable members of our community.

So save the date, Tuesday, August 13 at 9:30am in James C. Chalfant’s courtroom (Department 85) in the Stanley Mosk Courthouse at 111 N. Hill Street for a trial setting conference. We’ve gotten familiar with Judge Chalfant from attending the hearings around Catholic Charities’ attempts to demolish the Jewish/Labor landmark B’nai B’rith Lodge in the Pico-Union District for a vacant lot, and are curious to see how he’ll handle this case. We’ll continue to update you on this important preservation battle on our dedicated newsletter page.

And if you’d like to pour the tea about preservation and demolitions and the beauty of old buildings as places where Angelenos of courage and imagination can reinvent themselves and inspire future generations, then sign up for this Saturday’s debut walking tour of Charles Bukowsi’s Westlake.

We’ll be trekking around a gorgeous neighborhood that couldn’t be further removed from Brentwood’s high walls and the insulation that comes with inherited millions, to talk about how an abused kid from West Adams found love, hope and inspiration in the bars and bungalow courts of mid-century Los Angeles, and became the most shoplifted writer in America. Join us, do!

And click over to our website to see tour dates listed through August, including some Sunday outings by popular request, and an all new tour, West Adams Sugar Hill and Angelus Rosedale Cemetery. And because the Know Your Downtown LA tour on July 27 is nearly sold out, we’ve added a visit to the seldom seen Dutch Chocolate Shop to the June 1 POP - Preserving Our Past tour. Plus a Real Black Dahlia walking tour on July 6. And absolutely no walks in Brentwood.

Yours for Los Angeles,

Kim & Richard

Esotouric

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. 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.

---

UPCOMING BUS & WALKING TOURS

• Charles Bukowski’s Westlake (Sat. 5/11) • Hotel Horrors & Main Street Vice (Sat. 5/18) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sat. 5/25) • POP – Preserving Our Past Featuring the Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sat. 6/1) • Westlake Park (Sat. 6/8) • Highland Park Arroyo (Sat. 6/15) • Film Noir / Real Noir (Sat. 6/29) • The Real Black Dahlia (Sat. 7/6) • Angelino Heights & Carroll Avenue (Sat. 7/13) • Miracle Mile Marvels and Madness (Sun. 7/21) • Know Your Downtown L.A.: Tunnels To Towers To The Dutch Chocolate Shop (Sat. 7/27) • Evergreen Cemetery, 1877 (Sun. 8/4) • West Adams Sugar Hill and Angelus Rosedale Cemetery (Sat. 8/10) • Broadway: Downtown Los Angeles’ Beautiful, Magical Mess (Sun. 8/25) • Raymond Chandler’s Noir Downtown Los Angeles (Sat. 8/31)

1. Postcript: As reporters ask the property owners’ attorneys for comment on their Petition, they repeat their disturbing allegation that there is some conspiracy in a private citizen, who is also owner of a tour company, having sent an email to the office of an elected official. In a statement provided to The Independent UK (Owners of Marilyn Monroe’s home sue Los Angeles for right to demolish historic property, 5/8/2024), Peter C. Sheridan says “The City’s conduct, including blatant deceit regarding its behind-the-scenes dealings with biased third-parties to rig the process (including involvement of profiteering tour operators), has caused irreparable harm to the plaintiffs and petitioners, depriving them of their vested rights.” And in The Sacramento Bee (Owners of Marilyn Monroe’s house are suing to tear it down in California. Here’s why, 5/8/2024), Sheridan is quoted in a statement provided to McClatchy News: “The City of Los Angeles engaged in an illegal and unconstitutional conspiracy... In particular, the City invoked an unconstitutional ‘stay’ of city issued and vested demo and grading permits, secretly worked with third-parties (including for-profit tour operators and a local conservancy organization) to assure their desired outcome.”