Reuters
[Source: Reuters]
The Los Angeles City Council voted on Friday to launch a process to designate actress Marilyn Monroe’s former home, where she died of a drug overdose in 1962, a historic and cultural monument, blocking plans to demolish the property.
The motion to initiate consideration of the Spanish Colonial-style house in L.A.’s Brentwood section for historic preservation was introduced by Councilwoman Traci Park and approved unanimously the same day, according to her spokesperson Jamie Paige.
In response to the 12-0 vote, the city’s Board of Building and Safety Commissioners immediately revoked a demolition permit that had been issued a day earlier. The City Council motion itself also bars major alterations to the property while review of its potential status as a landmark is under way.
Paige said she visited the house on Thursday and that no work had been done at the site, currently owned by a little-known entity called Glory of the Snow Trust.
Monroe purchased the single-story, 2,900-square-foot (270-sq-meter) house in the early 1960s for $75,000 after the end of her third marriage, to playwright Arthur Miller, according to the Los Angeles Times. It was the only residence the actress, who spent part of her childhood in an orphanage and foster care, ever independently owned.
The screen legend, star of such films as “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” “Some Like It Hot” and “The Misfits,” was found dead in a bedroom of the home in August 1962 at the age of 36. The cause of death was ruled to be acute barbiturate poisoning.
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