Table Of Content
- Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home granted a temporary reprieve from demolition
- Law that ended single-family zoning is struck down for five Southern California cities
- The Dwell House Is a Modern Prefab ADU Delivered to Your Backyard
- Chris Pratt, Katherine Schwarzenegger could’ve given Craig Ellwood teardown ‘some honor,’ architect’s daughter says
- Homeless encampments are on the ballot in Arizona. Could California, other states follow?
- Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger Demolished a Craig Ellwood, and the Internet Is Furious
- More From the Los Angeles Times

The Zimmerman house, with its floor-to-ceiling glass windows and open floor plans, was designed early in her father’s career and wasn’t the best representation of his work, Ellwood said. The single-story home and its grounds have since been cleared and in its place will be a massive home in the modern farmhouse style that has come to dominate US suburbs. Los Angeles-based modernist architect Craig Ellwood completed the Zimmerman House in the Brentwood neighborhood in 1950.
Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home granted a temporary reprieve from demolition
The city’s SurveyLA program had identified the property as potentially historic, but no protections were afforded, the conservancy wrote on Instagram. Pratt and Schwarzenegger, who share two children, are still trying to sell a nearly 13,000-square-foot Mediterranean-style Pacific Palisades home that they listed last summer for $32 million. Photos of the former dwelling on US Modernist show a living room with a brick fireplace, sliding glass doors that open to the backyard, and an eat-in kitchen with a light fixture shaped like a flying saucer. The owners of Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home argued against landmark status, but L.A.’s Cultural Heritage Commission unanimously voted to recommend the property as a historic cultural monument. It was most recently home to the late Hilda Rolfe, the widow of Sam Rolfe, co-creator of the series The Man from Uncle.
Law that ended single-family zoning is struck down for five Southern California cities
Five and Dime Ale House eyes September opening in Hampden - Baltimore Sun
Five and Dime Ale House eyes September opening in Hampden.
Posted: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Razing the Zimmerman House is not just “so brutal,” but wasteful in a variety of ways, Ellwood added. She lamented that the home did not have some kind of ceremonious sendoff — final tours for architecture students, a celebratory cocktail hour, donation of materials for architectural studies — before it was torn down. "We need a chief of preservation who really connects the dots between things like Survey LA and what’s actually going on at each address," Rummerfield says. "Even if you’re just talking about the top three percent of notable buildings that should be saved, or saying making blanket designations, like ‘all Paul R. Williams’ or ‘all Craig Ellwood,’ L.A. needs to stop passing the buck on preservation."
The Dwell House Is a Modern Prefab ADU Delivered to Your Backyard
The property, which is just across the street from Schwarzenegger’s mother, Maria Shriver, will also feature a three-car garage and a secondary unit near the pool. Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger demolished a famed midcentury home designed by late architect Craig Ellwood to make room for a new, modern mansion. Chris Pratt has drawn ire from architecture aficionados after news broke that the actor and his wife, Katherine Schwarzenegger, had razed a historic, mid-century modern home to make way for a sprawling 15,000-sq-ft mansion. The Los Angeles Conservancy, a non-profit that seeks to save and protect historic buildings, warned of the impending demolition in January and said that the residence appeared “to be highly intact and a noteworthy example of modernist design from this era”. With the Zimmerman House now a pile of rubble and Pratt and Schwarzenegger’s new mansion reportedly still in early construction, Ellwood said she hopes the couple considers giving back to the architecture community amid the backlash. Throughout his decades-long career, Craig Ellwood brought his indoor-outdoor living approach to several properties across Southern California, including his beachfront Hunt House in Malibu.
"Craig Ellwood homes elicit a very strong emotional response from buyers," he says. Celebrity couple Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger reportedly bought the Ellwood-designed midcentury residence for $12.5 million in an off-market sale, then demolished the home with plans to build a modern farmhouse-style mansion in its place. Ellwood, an Ojai-based interior designer, spoke to The Times about her father’s late ‘40s Brentwood commission, known among locals as the Zimmerman House after original owners Martin and Eva Zimmerman. The property, which she described as a “time capsule” because of its Midcentury Modern aesthetic, was purchased last year and set for demolition seemingly without reason. In recent weeks, several reports revealed that the Marvel star and Schwarzenegger purchased the lot for $12.5 million and that their new mansion — to be designed by Ken Ungar — was the reason for the teardown.

Five and Dime Ale House a fit in Hampden - Baltimore Sun
Five and Dime Ale House a fit in Hampden.
Posted: Wed, 07 Dec 2016 08:00:00 GMT [source]
Has been incredibly lax about that sort of designation for years, passing the onus onto citizens and architectural fans in the community. There’s no head of preservation in the city government, either, so when appeals or requests for historic designation are submitted to places like the planning committee or the Office of Historic Resources, they can sit for years before even being addressed, during which time the homes or buildings in question may either fall into disrepair or disappear altogether. Last year, the couple purchased the 1950 Zimmerman house, designed by the architect Craig Ellwood, in Los Angeles’s Brentwood neighborhood for $12.5m. The residence, with landscaping by Garrett Eckbo – who has been described as the pioneer of modern landscaping – had previously been featured in Progressive Architecture magazine. Architect Ken Ungar, whose portfolio largely features high-end modern farmhouse-style residences, will design a home for the couple, Architectural Digest reported.
— Pratt street Ale House —
Video of the property from December 2022 shows a light-filled home that appears to have been well-preserved, with large windows, wood floors and mid-century furniture.
Part of the reason people are angry is because, realistically, the couple didn’t actually have to demolish the residence. They reportedly purchased the house because Schwarzenegger’s mother, Maria Shriver, lives right across the street, raising the question of whether there were other properties on the block they could have pursued. And while the home’s 2,770 square feet is modest by today’s big money real estate standards, realtors like Take Sunset’s Rob Kallick agree that, had the house hit the open market, it would have generated a lot of interest, even at that steep price point.
Chris Pratt and Katherine Schwarzenegger have been at work overseeing the construction of a brand new 15,000-square-foot home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles since late last year. In November, the Daily Mail reported that the couple were building the mansion on an empty lot, conveniently located right across the street from the estate of Schwarzenegger’s mother, Maria Shriver. However, a recent Robb Report article reveals that when the Guardians of the Galaxy star and the self-help author bought the property, it featured a historic home, which they had razed.
In its place, Pratt and Schwarzenegger commissioned architect Ken Ungar to design a sprawling two-story home, with each level measuring in at roughly 5,000 square feet. The couple, who paid $12.5 million for the nearly one-acre property in an off-market January 2023 deal, also obtained permits for a three-car garage and a poolside ADU. The seller was the estate of Hilda Rolfe, the late widow of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. co-creator Sam Rolfe. The abode in question was known as Zimmerman House, a 1950 build by acclaimed modernist architect Craig Ellwood, who participated in the famous Case Study Houses program. Spanning 2,770 square feet, the single-story dwelling had five bedrooms and three bathrooms. Many commenters decrying the demolition asked why the house wasn’t protected, saying that it should have been on some sort of historic list.