Live in Los Angeles needs to be regularly reminded that much of what surrounds its inhabitants is fleeting. This essentially affects human life and nature, as this week's deadly fires have shown us. But also to that Both the vital everyday structures and the cultural monuments helped to celebrate the impressive achievements of this place, told the stories of its citizens and embodied its amazing combination of talent, originality and freedom.
Several treasured landmarks, spanning from the city's early history through the experimental modernism of the mid-20th century to the contemporary era, have fallen victim to the deadly wildfires that have devastated the region.
News arrived Wednesday of the loss of the historic ranch house once owned by popular Hollywood cowboy and comedian Will Rogers, who bought up hundreds of acres of land in the foothills of the Pacific Palisades in the 1920s.
This land, now a California State Park, is a place where you can find bright, majestic views of the ocean along a trail in about 10 minutes. Rogers' rustic 1926 clapboard house, with its wide porch and open courtyard on a slight hill, felt like a stroll into a rural time warp; a mix of authentic country life and Los Angeles-style elegance. There was the wagon wheel chandelier, the barn-like rafters, the heavy stone fireplace with a prized longhorn head, and countless Western paraphernalia, including saddles, Navajo rugs, and sepia-toned family photos.
Rogers hosted Walt Disney here, along with Clark Gable and Charles Lindbergh. The adjacent wooden stables right on the farm were just as wondrous. Rogers' visitors went there to saddle their horses and made their way to the adjacent riding arena and, below, to the polo field.
Victoria Yust, a Venice, California-based architect, called it her “happy place” when we visited about a year ago. “There was something so magical about it,” she said Wednesday. “It just felt like old California. You can just imagine this incredible way of life.” She was particularly taken by the central rotunda of the stables, whose intricate, radial rafters took your breath away. It was an architectural gem, hiding in an unpretentious spot as hikers climbed up the canyon beyond.
“It’s a completely devastating blow to all of us,” said Adrian Scott Fine, executive director of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the region’s largest conservation advocacy group. “It’s just a touchstone. One can hardly talk about the history of Southern California and the Pacific Palisades without acknowledging this cultural folk hero, Will Rogers.”
Fine said he and his colleagues have their hands full tracking the destruction of cultural heritage in the region.
“These are heavy losses,” he said. “There is no other place like this that can tell stories like this.”
Another major loss in Pacific Palisades is Ray Kappe's 1991 Keeler House, considered one of the hallmarks of this talented, often overlooked Los Angeles architect. (Kappe, who died in 2019, was one of the founders of the avant-garde Southern California Institute of Architecture, or SCI-Arc.)
The owner of the house, Anne Keeler, 68, is safely out of town. She said a neighbor confirmed to her that it had been destroyed. “It’s gone,” she said.
Perched cantilevered on a steep hillside overlooking the sea, the residence embodies Kappe's bravery and intuitive craftsmanship. It extended downward via a central staircase lit by a long gable skylight and was connected to the scene below by oversized windows. Flanked by floating, staggered floors and oversized balconies, the ethereal property remained grounded by the weight of exposed redwood and smooth, thick concrete.
While the home's dramatic views and monumental forms beguiled visitors, Keeler, who had lived there since its completion, particularly liked details like the silky redwood surfaces. “We were all just stroking the wood when it arrived. It was so beautiful,” she said. She noted that the exposed redwood beams upstairs were formed from overlapping boards, giving them a surprising texture and presence. “The ability to sit at the dining room table and look up and see these amazing beams and their shadows – I really enjoyed that,” she said.
Crosby Doe, a real estate agent whose firm focuses on architect-designed properties, had worked with Keeler to sell the home, which was listed for $8 million. “I have been looking at important houses from Frank Lloyd Wright to Frank Gehry for over 50 years and consider this one of the ten most creative works of architecture I have ever seen,” Doe said.
Not far from the Keeler House, which sits on concrete stilts over a curving stretch of Sunset Boulevard, the wood-walled Bridges House was also confirmed to have burned down by two people who were at the scene. Its architect, Robert Bridges, now a professor emeritus at the USC Marshall School of Business, built the house in 1974, and it has since served as a monument to the structural audacity of the region's buildings. “It may look precarious, but it’s not,” Bridges told the Times in a 2014 article. “From an engineering perspective, this thing is perfectly rational.”
These losses are felt far beyond the Palisades. In Altadena, the Eaton Fire has already claimed two cultural treasures: the 1907 Zane Gray Estate, the Mediterranean-style residence of one of California's great Western writers; and the 1887 Andrew McNally House, a Queen Anne-style gem where the cartographer and co-founder of Rand-McNally lived.
Gray, who wrote adventure stories such as “Riders of the Purple Sage,” “Wildfire” and “The Rainbow Trail,” turned to Myron Hunt, the prolific architect who designed the Rose Bowl and the Ambassador Hotel.
Among the attractions of architect Frederick Roehrig's McNally House are its bell-shaped roof, bluish-green shingles, Seven fireplaces and sumptuous, eclectic style rooms, highlighted by the spacious Turkish Room. “It was just a huge milestone,” Fine said, adding that the conservancy planned to hold its annual fundraiser there this year.
Not all of the destroyed buildings were monuments. Some of these, like Malibu's rundown Reel Inn (and beach favorites like Gladstones and Moonshadows) and the cozy red premises of Altadena's Fox's, were neighborhood institutions. The bungalow-style Topanga Ranch Motel was built in 1929 by none other than William Randolph Hearst. There was the Altadena Rabbit Museum, which housed more than 45,000 rabbit objects, and the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, which existed for more than 80 years.
So now comes the anxious wait to find out what else has fallen and maybe yet to come. We're updating fire maps with red outlines moving ever closer to popular landmarks. Some of the world's greatest architecture stands helplessly on the edge.
In the Palisades there is Kappe's own famous residence, on a hillside in Rustic Canyon; Its concrete towers support a series of floating platforms that merge with the outside world via massive windows.
There is, of course, the revolutionary Eames House by Charles and Ray Eames, whose colorful prefabricated buildings are emblematic of mid-century experimentation. It is adjacent to a variety of modernist monuments, including Rodney Walker's Case Study House No. 18, Richard Neutra's Case Study House No. 20, and Eero Saarinen's Entenza House. The evacuation zone includes Frank Gehry's new home on Adelaide Drive, his Schnabel House (1989) and Frank Lloyd Wright's Sturges House (1939).
In their destructive violence, the fires have highlighted Los Angeles' spectacular architectural heritage – one that is often taken for granted or even ignored. They remind us that the city has long been one of the world's greatest laboratories of residential architecture and that its best buildings are lauded works of art. and equally vulnerable to the ravages of nature.
Los Angeles will not be able to replace what was lost, and some of these sites may not even be allowed to be built on. But it is possible to think more deeply about what we want next and how we can live up to such extraordinary successes.