The former Los Angeles home of the icon Marilyn Monroe was bulldozed just days before a meeting with the LA Cultural Heritage Comission, the Los Angeles Daily News reports. The house was demolished to make way for luxury condos.
Jennifer Getz, of the Valley Village neighborhood, was the one who nominated the house for landmark status. "I can't even breathe. My neighbors and I are in mourning," Getz told the LA Daily News. "It's one of the biggest losses in the San Fernando Valley."
Monroe was 17 years old and known as Norma Jean during the time she lived in the backyard house. She stayed there with her in-laws between 1944 and 1945 while her then-husband, sailor James Dougherty, was at war overseas. But because Monroe did not live in the house during her career, preservationists like Getz struggled to obtain landmark status, according to the Daily Mail.
Although the demolition took place before a meeting with the LA Cultural Heritage Commission, city officials were already planning to deny the application to declare the property as a historical-cultural monument, KTLA reports.
"Marilyn Monroe is obviously an iconic figure nationally but she had more than 30 residences in the Los Angeles area," Ken Bernstein, director of the Los Angeles Office of Historic Resources, told KTLA.
