The Los Angeles home where the actress Marilyn Monroe spent the final months of her life was saved, yet again, this time by a judge who denied a request from its current owners to raze it.
The owners, Brinah Milstein and Roy Bank, own an adjacent property and sought to combine the properties after buying Ms. Monroe’s former home in August 2023 for $8.4 million.
But in a brief order released last week, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, James C. Chalfant, ruled against their petition for demolition, ending a two-year legal battle between the owners and the city.
The Department of Building and Safety granted a permit to demolish the Spanish-style hacienda shortly after Ms. Milstein and her husband, Mr. Bank, acquired the property at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, which Ms. Monroe lived in for about six months in 1962.
Ms. Milstein is an heir of a wealthy real estate family, and Mr. Bank is a former reality television producer and head of development for the company behind “Survivor” on CBS and “The Apprentice” on NBC.
But news of the demolition permit led to an outcry from many Angelenos, historians, preservationists and fans of Ms. Monroe around the world.
After receiving hundreds of emails and phone calls, Traci Park, a Los Angeles City Council member who represents the neighborhood, issued an urgent motion to the council to consider the home as a city historic cultural monument.
“There is no other person or place in the city of Los Angeles as iconic as Marilyn Monroe and her Brentwood home,” Ms. Park said in June 2024. “To lose this piece of history, the only home that Marilyn Monroe ever owned, would be a devastating blow for historic preservation and for a city where less than 3 percent of historic designations are associated with women’s heritage.”
Though the city flagged the house in a 2013 evaluation as “potentially significant” because of its ownership, a formal designation process did not move forward.
City records showed a demolition permit had been issued for the single-family home, attached garage, pool house and storage.
Records also showed there were plans to backfill the kidney-shaped pool lined with palm trees, which was captured in photographs as the police responded to the scene of Ms. Monroe’s death in 1962.
Ms. Milstein and Mr. Bank said in their lawsuit filed in May 2024 that the home had not received a landmark designation in the years since Ms. Monroe died.
“We have watched it go unmaintained and unkept,” Ms. Milstein said while addressing the Cultural Heritage Commission in January 2024. “We purchased the property because it is within feet of ours.”
The couple argued to the Cultural Heritage Commission that Ms. Monroe wasn’t productive during the period she was living at the Brentwood residence; that the home had been significantly renovated by 14 owners since 1962, when Ms. Monroe died; and that her main home was a New York apartment she had shared with a former husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.
They offered to move the home to a more accessible location, saying that Ms. Monroe’s fans might be able to tour it and take pictures because it would no longer be a private residence on a narrow, secluded street. They added that it would help stem the tide of tour buses and people in the neighborhood.
While the home is not visible from the street, tourists frequently stop to pay their respects and hold their phones over their heads to take photographs.
The Brentwood Community Council, an organization that says it represents about 35,000 people, including homeowner and business groups, and several other homeowners associations in the area opposed the landmark designation and supported moving the house.
The original house was believed to have been built in 1929, and most of the alterations to it were done before Ms. Monroe bought the property for $75,000, according to the city’s application for historic designation.
“The subject property is the first and only residence Monroe ever purchased by herself, and represents a portion of her productive period and an embarkation on a new phase of her life,” the application reads.
The landmark status was approved by the commission, preventing the owners from demolishing Ms. Monroe’s former home.
The owners filed a lawsuit against the city, claiming that officials had acted unconstitutionally and accusing them of “backdoor machinations” in trying to preserve a house that did not meet the criteria as a historic cultural monument.
“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,” the lawsuit said.
Judge Chalfant denied the claim in June 2024, saying in a provisional ruling that it was an “ill-disguised motion to win so that they can demolish the home and eliminate the historic cultural monument issue.”
The City Council ultimately voted unanimously in favor of designating the home as a landmark, and the Department of Building and Safety revoked the couple’s demolition permits.
In the latest motion, the couple said that the landmark designation interfered with their right to knock down the home in order to expand their main home, which is adjacent to the property.
But the judge ruled to maintain the landmark designation, protecting the former home of Ms. Monroe in perpetuity.
Ms. Monroe became a pop culture icon in the 1950s with roles in movies like “All About Eve,” “The Seven Year Itch” and “Some Like It Hot.”
Ms. Monroe moved to the home in early 1962, naming it “Cursum Perficio,” which in Latin loosely translates to “I end the journey.” She died there of an apparent drug overdose on Aug. 4, 1962.
Adeel Hassan, a New York-based reporter for The Times, covers breaking news and other topics.
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