I haven’t had the wherewithal to write much this week. Mostly because I was grappling with the personal fallout of the fires in Altadena. The Eaton Fire destroyed my childhood home and displaced my parents from the house they were renting. My own home in Valley Village was an unexpectedly full house for a few days, amidst the chaos of a burning city. When there’s chaos I tend to make my world smaller and concentrate on the most immediate tasks. Making sure my family is safe: check.

But I’ve also been thinking a lot about buildings and what they mean to us. In a week where so many structures have gone up in flames, the importance of buildings – especially those that have been with us for a long time – is all the more apparent. Buildings are more than assemblages of wood and brick and concrete. The thousands of homes that burned were places of refuge, and investments that parents hoped to pass on to their kids. Schools, neighborhood restaurants, places of worship – all normal, everyday places that we invest with meaning simply by stepping foot inside them, making them part of the texture of our lives. 

Over time, an old building accretes layers of history that can help tell the stories of the communities that built and occupied them. The areas razed by the fires will surely rebuild into vibrant neighborhoods again. But every destroyed historic building is one less opportunity to understand what was important to a community, and how that evolved over time. Which also means that the ones that survive are all the more meaningful.

So let’s mourn the LA County landmarks on the National Register that we lost in the Eaton and Palisades Fires. And while we’re at it – let’s celebrate the ones that are still with us.

NRHP landmarks in LA destroyed or severely damaged by the fires

Andrew McNally House (Altadena)

Another mansion on Altadena’s “Millionaire’s Row,” this one hailing from 1887, very early in Altadena’s history. Designed by the great Frederick Roehrig (the architect of Hotel Green in Pasadena) for the “McNally” part of the Rand McNally map company. This was a stately Queen Anne Victorian, all blue shingle and brick, with an unusual octagonal structure on the west that housed the jawdropping “Turkish room” – an Arabesque room adorned with patterned rugs, wood panels, silks and stencils of Arabic phrases on the walls. Film producer Frank Mayor and his wife purchased the house in 2021, and had just completed three years of restoration when it burned in the Eaton Fire.

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

Farnsworth Park (Altadena)

This large park at the top of Lake Avenue was originally intended as a nursery for LA County. It was converted into a proper park in the 1930s at the urging of Major General Charles Farnsworth (a WWI vet who had retired to Altadena), and another distinguished Altadena resident William D. Davies. Davies planned the community center (completed in 1934) and Farnsworth designed the park (completed in 1938); they were finished in part thanks to PWA and WPA funds and local labor. Both the park and the building were later renamed after the two men. The William D. Davies Memorial building was reduced to its stone foundation and chimneys in the Eaton Fire. I’ve read that the amphitheater burned down as well.

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

Mount Lowe Railway – Reconstructed Shelter @ Inspiration Point (Altadena)

From 1893 through 1938, you could take a trolley from Altadena all the way up to the top of Echo Mountain via the Mount Lowe Railway. It was a tremendous feat of engineering, split into three segments including a funicular on a 62% grade. On your way to the top you’d encounter multiple hotels, a watering hole called Ye Alpine Tavern, an observatory, even a zoo. The Railway suffered numerous fires and floods over the years, and was finally abandoned in 1938; the Forestry Service dynamited the ruins in the ’50s. While there are only building foundations and some rusted-out machinery left, some restoration work in 1996 reconstructed the shelter at Inspiration Point up at the top of the mountain, complete with an American flag made of metal. Brian Marcroft, a co-founder of the Scenic Mt. Lowe Railway Historical Committee, has confirmed that the Eaton Fire burned down the shelter that helped to restore.

+ Read the history of the Mount Lowe Railway on LAist

Scripps Hall (Altadena)

This large craftsman mansion from 1904, designed by CW Buchanan, was once the mansion of Mr. and Mrs. William Armiger Scripps. William was part of a dynasty of English newspaper publishers and bookbinders. Situated at the west edge of “Millionaire’s Row,” the home anchored a 20+ acre estate complete with orange, lemon and olive orchards. In 1986 it was sold to Pasadena Waldorf School. The main building was severely damaged in the Eaton Fire, according to Pasadena Waldorf’s Instagram page.

+ Read Scripps Hall’s National Register application form

Walter D. Valentine Cottage B (Altadena)

This cottage was originally a humble cabin in the Wildwood Park community in northeast Altadena, built by an unknown architect in 1912. Henry Greene, 1/2 of the famed Greene & Greene firm, enlarged it in the early 1920s. He used stone boulders from the Arroyo nearby, added wrought-iron fixtures and clinker-brick chimneys, the whole craftsman nine. It burned down in the Eaton Fire.

+ Read more about it on the National Park Service website

Will Rogers House (Pacific Palisades)

This one hurts, because I visited once with my wife and daughter a few years ago and swore I would come back to take the tour inside the ranch house, but we never made it. Will Rogers was the kind of celebrity that we just don’t see anymore, a phenomenally rich man-of-the-people, beloved by all, who was great at everything from acting to rope tricks to journalism to comedy to flying. He developed this ranch in the 1920s and ‘30s, which included horse stables and corrals, a golf course, riding trails with views of the Pacific Ocean, and a 31-room ranch house decked out in western style – and just the right amount of excess. Will’s wife Betty donated the whole ranch to the CA State Parks system in 1944. The main house and other buildings on the ranch were destroyed. 

+ Read the Will Rogers House’s National Register application form

Zane Grey Estate (Altadena)

A Mediterranean revival beauty on Altadena’s “Millionaire’s Row” (Mariposa Street west of Lake), designed by the venerable Myron Hunt & Elmer Grey, and completed in 1907 for inventor Arthur Woodward and his wife Edith Woodward. There’s a sad irony in its destruction by the Eaton Fire, in that it was supposedly the first “fireproof” home in Altadena, owing to its construction of reinforced concrete. Apparently this was at the insistence of Edith, who had survived the 1903 Iroquois Theater Fire, the deadliest single-building fire in US history. The home is named after the author Zane Grey, who purchased it in 1920, eight years after he published the massively popular western Riders of the Purple Sage. Grey expanded the mansion, and his family kept it until 1970. In recent years the estate has been an Airbnb rental, and hosted a semi-legal underground farmers market.

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

NRHP landmarks in LA that survived the fires (as far as we know)

Bradbury House (Santa Monica)

A gorgeous Spanish colonial designed by John W. Byers in 1922 adobe for Lewis L. Bradbury, Jr., son of the dude who commissioned the Bradbury Building downtown.

+ Read about it on the LA Conservancy website

Case Study House No. 8 (Eames House – Pacific Palisades)

If Ray and Charles Eames had only revolutionized domestic furniture, they would still be justifiably famous. But they also made major contributions to graphic design, art and architecture – and the house they designed for themselves in Pacific Palisades is simply one of the greatest, most important houses built in the 20th century, a model of style and economy and imagination. This was part of the lauded Case Study House program sponsored by Arts & Architecture Magazine in the late ‘40s through the ‘60s, which arranged commissions for hot architects to design experimental, cost-effective homes for the many families getting started after WWII. The Eames is another one I was gritting my teeth about, because I adore everything Eames and CSH and still haven’t managed to visit it. The Eames Foundation confirms that, at least as of January 12, the Eames House remains unscathed by the Palisades Fire. Crossing my fingers it stays that way.

+ Hear Ice Cube’s excellent meditation on the Eames House

Case Study House No. 9/Entenza House & Case Study House No. 18/West House (Pacific Palisades)

Two more houses in the Case Study House programs, adjacent to the Eames House on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. No. 9 was a collaboration by Charles Eames & Finnish architect Eero Saarinen, and occupied for five years by John Entenza, the editor-in-chief of Arts & Architecture Magazine and overseer of the Case Study House program. Rodney Walker designed No. 18 and its double-sided fireplace; his was completed in 1948, the first of the four Case Study Houses on Chautauqua Boulevard.

+ Peek inside Case Study House No. 9 at ArchDaily

+ More on Case Study House No. 18 at the LA Conservancy website

Case Study House 20B (Bass House – Altadena)

A lot of people on local Altadena Facebook groups have asked after this one, which is located about halfway down Christmas Tree Lane. It was so close to the Eaton Fire carnage and yet the few commenters who were there firsthand reported that it seemed okay as of a couple days ago. It was another in the Case Study House program, this one by the unmatched mid-century modern firm of Buff, Straub & Hensman. The original owners were Saul Bass, a graphic designer responsible for iconic title sequences and posters for Hitchcock, Wilder, Kubrick & Scorsese, and his first wife Dr. Ruth Bass, a biochemist. 

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

Christmas Tree Lane (Altadena)

Every December, the deodar cedar trees lining Santa Rosa Avenue in Altadena are lit up with colorful Christmas lights. It’s a tradition dating back to 1920, when a local businessman named Frederick Nash proposed the idea. He wasn’t the only Frederick in this story though: there’s a legend that the trees were brought to Altadena by the town’s co-founder John Woodbury, who returned from a trip to Italy with the cedar seeds in hand, and his brother Frederick planted them in their family home, the Woodbury-Story House. When the Eaton Fire was done ripping through the foothills of Altadena, most of the trees were still standing. 

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

Henry Weaver House (Santa Monica)

A masterful 1910 craftsman home by the Milwaukee Building Company, the same firm that gave us Grauman’s Chinese Theater and the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood 12 years later. It was designed for the midwestern hotelier Henry Weaver.

+ Read about the Weaver House at the Santa Monica Conservancy website

Isaac Milbank House (Santa Monica)

1911 craftsman by the Milwaukee Building Company (same firm behind the Henry Weaver House, plus the Grauman’s Chinese and Egyptian Theaters). It was commissioned by businessman Isaac Milbank, co-founder of the Borden Milk Company; he was also an oilman, and held a few firearms patents. Nice diverse portfolio, that one. Restored in 2008.

+ More on the Milbank House at the Santa Monica Conservancy website

Keyes Bungalow (Altadena)

Here’s a great example of an “airplane” bungalow, with a little attic-sized space on the second floor that looks like a cockpit.

+ Feature about the Keyes Bungalow from American Bungalow magazine

Pacific Electric Substation No. 8 (Altadena)

This large brick building on the west side of Lake Avenue, right across from the Aldi, once housed the transformers that powered the interurban and trolley cars for Pasadena. It also provided power for the Mount Lowe Railway, the scenic mountain railroad that brought tourists up into the mountains above Altadena from 1893 – 1938. It’s now a thrift shop called Full Circle, run by the Pacific Southwest Mennonite Conference. Some TikTok footage uploaded on January 9 showed the building still standing. The shop owners tell me they haven’t been able to get there to confirm the current status, but there is hope that it survived the Eaton Fire.

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

Villa Carlotta (Altadena)

Villa Carlotta is a fine example of architect Myron Hunt’s residential work (he also designed the Pasadena Central Library and the Rose Bowl), and one of Altadena’s first homes designed for electricity from the get-go. It was built for Francis R. Welles, who oversaw European operations for Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone company for over 30 years. This one was just sold in late 2024 – I reached out to the realtor who confirmed that somehow it made it through the Eaton Fire, as did the two homes adjacent to it. 

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

Woodbury-Story House (Altadena)

Often described as the first house in Altadena (though the Crank House also vies for that distinction), this 1882 mansion was the home of the Woodbury family, founders of Altadena. It was later expanded by a prominent pump organ vendor. It’s said that the deodar cedars lining Christmas Tree Lane were first planted in the nursery behind this house. Based on some aerial footage aired on live news, it would appear that the house survived the Eaton Fire intact.

+ Read about it on EtanDoesLA.com

Stay safe, Los Angeles. I love you.