Left: The front of the home once occupied by Marilyn Monroe in Los Angeles, California is shown; Right: Marilyn Monroe. (Photos via court documents).
The owners of the 2,900 square foot hacienda owned by Marilyn Monroe at the time of her death are now suing the city of Los Angeles over what they say are “backroom machinations” to designate the home a historical landmark and thwart their plans to demolish it.
The house is located at 12306 Fifth Helena Drive in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles, California, on a secluded residential street. The home was built in 1929 and was the only residence Monroe owned independently. She purchased it less than six months before her death in 1962 for $75,000 after her divorce from the playwright Arthur Miller and lived in it until she died by suicide in August of that year.
The four-bedroom Spanish colonial-style house became well known for its kidney-shaped pool and towering palm trees. Six months after Monroe moved in, she died of a drug overdose in her bedroom at age 36. The house ultimately became known as “Cursum Perficio,” Latin for “I end the journey.”
Real estate heiress Brinah Milstein and her husband Roy Bank, a reality television producer, own the home next door to the Monroe house. The couple purchased the adjacent Monroe property last July for $8.35 million with a plan to combine the two properties and expand their current home.
After their purchase of the estate, Milstein and Bank applied for and received a demolition permit for the single-family home, attached garage, pool house and storage. However, in a lawsuit filed Monday, they say the city of Los Angeles is illegally attempting to thwart their plans by inappropriately having the Monroe house designated a historical landmark.
The plaintiffs filed a case against Los Angeles in Superior Court in Los Angeles on Monday. The 118-page complaint takes issue with what it deems “the City’s abhorrent conduct” in engineering a “preferred outcome” and depriving them of a “neutral and fair process.”
They note in their filing that after Monroe’s death, the property has had 14 other owners and the city has issued over a dozen permits for remodeling of the home. The plaintiffs say the house has been “substantially altered” since Monroe’s death and claim there is no remaining physical ties to Monroe herself.
“There is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house, not a piece of furniture, not a paint chip, not a carpet, nothing,” said the complaint.
Moreover, they point out, the house is “not visible from the public realm,” and cannot be seen or accessed by the public without crossing over the adjacent property owned by plaintiffs.
Milstein and Bank said that after their received their construction permits, the city received complaints from people opposed to the demolition and began a “a spasm of activity” to suddenly declare the property a historic landmark and block the construction altogether. The plaintiffs argued that city staff and Councilwoman Traci Park “arranged the desired outcome” by orchestrating what would become a unanimous city council vote to begin the process of designating the property a historic and cultural monument.
Milstein and Bank requested a court order blocking the monument designation and allowing them to move forward with their plans to demolish the former Monroe residence.
A full City Council vote is expected by June to formalize the landmark designation. Now the owners are hoping to restore their right to demolish the property.
Peter C. Sheridan, of Glaser Weil Fink Howard Jordan & Shapiro LLP, attorney for Brinah Milstein, said in a statement that Los Angeles’ “backroom machinations” were conducted “in the name of preserving a house which in no way meets any of the criteria for an ‘Historic Cultural Movement.””
“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,” Sheridan continued.
The City of Los Angeles has not yet responded to request for comment.
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