Los Angeles’ wildfires are taking down storied architectural gems

LOS ANGELES – To live in Los Angeles is to be regularly reminded that much of what surrounds its residents is fleeting. That pertains, most essentially, to human life and the natural world, as the deadly fires have reminded people.

But it also pertains to both the vital everyday structures and the cultural monuments that helped mark this place’s stunning achievements, told its citizens’ stories and embodied its startling confluence of talent, originality and freedom.

Several cherished landmarks, ranging from the city’s early history to its experimental mid-century modern period to its contemporary era, have fallen victim to the deadly wildfires that have ravaged the region.

News arrived on Jan 8 of the loss of the historic ranch house that once belonged to beloved Hollywood cowboy and comedian Will Rogers, who in the 1920s bought many hectares in the foothills of the Pacific Palisades. This land, now a California State Park, is a place where you can hop on a trail and find a glowing, majestic overlook of the ocean in about 10 minutes.

Rogers’ rustic clapboard home from 1926, with its wide porch and open courtyard standing on a slight rise, was like a walk into a rural time warp; a hybrid of authentic country life and LA-style enhancement.

There was the wagon wheel chandelier, the barn-like rafters, the heavy stone fireplace with a mounted prize longhorn head and endless western paraphernalia, including saddles, Navajo rugs and sepia family photos.

Rogers hosted entrepreneur Walt Disney here, along with actors Clark Gable and Charles Lindbergh.

Just as wondrous were the adjacent timber stables right off the courtyard. Rogers’ visitors went there to saddle up their horses on their way to the adjacent riding area and, below that, the polo field.

“It’s a completely devastating blow for all of us,” said Mr Adrian Scott Fine, chief executive of the Los Angeles Conservancy, the region’s major preservation advocacy group. “It’s just a touchstone. You can hardly talk about Southern California history and the Pacific Palisades without acknowledging this cultural folk hero, Will Rogers.”

Mr Fine and his colleagues have their hands full tracking the destruction of cultural heritage in the region. “These are profound losses,” he said. “There are no other places like these that can tell these kinds of stories.”

Another major loss in Pacific Palisades is Ray Kappe’s Keeler House from 1991, considered one of the hallmarks of this talented, often-overlooked LA architect. Kappe, who died in 2019, was a founder of the avant-garde Southern California Institute of Architecture.

The home’s owner, Ms Anne Keeler, 68, is safely out of town. She said that a neighbour confirmed to her that it had been destroyed. “It’s gone,” she said.

Cantilevered atop a steep hillside site and peering over the ocean, the residence typified Kappe’s bravery and intuitive craft.

It unfolded down its site via a central stair lit by a long gabled skylight, connected to the scene below with outsize windows. Flanked by floating, staggered floors and oversize balconies, the ethereal property remained grounded through the heft of exposed redwood and smooth concrete.

Not far from the Keeler house, perched on concrete stilts over a curving stretch of Sunset Boulevard, the timber-sided Bridges house has also been confirmed as burned by two people who have been to the site.

Its architect Robert Bridges, now an emeritus professor at the USC Marshall School of Business, built the home in 1974. Since then, it had stood as a monument to the structural daring of the region’s buildings. “It may look precarious, but it’s not,” he told The New York Times in a 2014 article. “From an engineering standpoint, this thing is absolutely rational.”

These losses are being felt far beyond the Palisades. In Altadena, the Eaton fire has already claimed two cultural treasures: the 1907 Zane Grey Estate, the Mediterranean-style residence of one of California’s great Western novelists; and the 1887 Andrew McNally House, a Queen Anne gem that was home to the mapmaking tycoon who co-founded technology company Rand-McNally.

Grey, who wrote adventure stories including Riders Of The Purple Sage, Wildfire and The Rainbow Trail, turned to prolific architect Myron Hunt, who designed the Rose Bowl and the Ambassador Hotel.

“It was just a massive landmark,” Mr Fine said of the Zane Grey estate, adding that the conservancy had planned to hold its annual benefit there in 2025.

Attractions of the McNally House, by architect Frederick Roehrig, include its bell-shaped roof, bluish green shingles, seven fireplaces and magnificently eclectic period rooms, highlighted by the lavish Turkish room.

Not all of the buildings that have been destroyed were architectural monuments.

Some, such as Malibu’s ramshackle Reel Inn – and beachfront favourites like Gladstones and Moonshadows – and the cosy red confines of Altadena’s Fox’s, were neighbourhood institutions.

The bungalow-style Topanga Ranch Motel was built in 1929 by American newspaper publisher and politician William Randolph Hearst. There was Altadena’s Bunny Museum, which housed more than 45,000 bunny objects, and the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, which had stood for more than 80 years.

So, now comes the anxious waiting, to find out what else has fallen, and may still. NYTIMES