Personally I don’t care for mid-century modern. 12.5 million dollar price tag, the other wealthy neighbors didn’t care enough to make a stink about preserving it, and honestly it is in a location where most people aren’t going to see or pass by it (at least I’m guessing, because Brentwood).
As for updating or renovating an old home to make it more livable… I have some strong opinions on that. Much along the lines of people complaining about the Pratt’s demolishing this house, I am confused and sometimes upset when people just gut old houses to turn them into HGTV modernism projects. I’m not saying you can’t reno the electrical to make it modern. I’m for making older houses more updated, even as far as making more usable living spaces. But when the outside screams craftsman and the inside is modern…just no.
Having lived in a 1910 craftsman that had a hard life…the words “it has a lot of character” take on a whole new meaning for me. I think Falling Water is a great example of fairly extreme architecture that you couldn’t pay me to live in, much less own.
Also, according to most TV shows the “average” person lives in a completely renovated period correct craftsman / arts & crafts home (stained wood trim, dark wall paint colors, leather furniture, ect…). Take a look at where the characters live. It’s either an apartment or a craftsman.
Yeah… opinions are fine. Ignoring the larger context around historical preservation isn’t particularly helpful, I’d argue. There reasons for preserving a building is not really about aesthetics, but about, well, historical preservation.
I will also enter into the controversy here with a full-throated “meh”. : )
I like mid-century style; I don’t personally find this version to look particularly amazing. And in fact found what I could see of the interior plan to be a bit dated for what I’d like, if I had as much money to throw around as Pratt does.
So, while I can see how it can be of note to fans of the style I don’t see it as particularly worth preserving. The seller and LA at large also didn’t bother to set the building or site as something historical to preserve.
So I don’t personally see what Pratt did as honestly all that terrible. Most likely I’d do something different with all that money; but it is their money. Maybe in its place they will build something that will look great to future generations. Most likely not, but who knows?
That’s my personal opinion; everywhere here and everyone else on earth is free to have a completely different opinion than mine. And to tell me all about it too. : )
It’s more “objective” than the “it’s ugly” vs. “it’s pretty” debate. Historical preservation is a field of study that people actually do. It’s not just some randos throwing out random opinions. Much like any other historical field, they’re drawing conclusions based on their years of expertise. I get that people think history and other fields are just people with “opinions” but they’re much more informed opinions about the history of the area, who designed, and built it, etc, and they make their case based on that. In that case, we might take their views into account a bit more than some dude saying “tear it down, cause I find it ugly.” But I guess that depends on whether or not you find history as a field to be more than “opinions” about the past, giving everyone an equal weight despite the years of work by the historian or presevationist. Most certainly, some have spent years arguing that expertise is just meaningless, and all opinions are valid. I’d argue not.
LA, it seems, has a bad track record of empowering their board in favor of tearing down to build new (ATL has the same problem, in fact). I suspect that builders contribute much to elections in the city (like here, too).
I suspect that if some rando had torn this house down, we wouldn’t even be talking about it. But since a lot of people have angst about this particular famous person, it’s gone viral.
And to say that no good houses have been built since 1969 is as ridiculous a generalization as saying anything built in the 50s wouldn’t meet the needs of the 21st century. Shit houses were built before 1969 and the only advantage of age is that the shittiest ones are already gone.
I agree that history is of course an informed opinion, and I agree that it’s generally good for society to give informed expert opinions more weight than less informed individual opinions. All other things being equal.
But also, not all historical importance is equal. I expect we can almost all agree with historical experts that a house designed by Abraham Lincoln is worth preserving. I expect almost all historical experts agree that most homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright are worth preserving.
But, are all houses designed by all architects of smaller note worth preserving? Maybe, maybe not. I would expect some historical opinion wavers. I would expect there must be some line to be drawn, at which point a house of some more minor historical note is not worth preserving.
Maybe this house is on the preserving side of that line, maybe it’s not.
So where is the expert report that Pratt and Schwarzenegger commissioned before tearing it down?
This is why I’m arguing that the US needs a listing system like every other comparable country. Maybe you’re right and this could be argued to not be worth preserving. But nobody even asked before tearing it down. We can’t expect the owners to work against their own economic interests, even in cases like this where there clearly wouldn’t have been any financial hardship if they has just built their McMansion next to the house. So government must step in as the representative of all of us.
Well, see, they’re rich and famous, and we should assume that because of that, they know better than actual experts in historical preservation! I mean… aren’t their needs more important that preserving something that might be a historically significant building!!! History’s just opinions anywayz! /s
We absolutely do. It’s often left up to the state and local municipalities, so that leaves a lot out (though the Federal government has national sites as well run by the National Parks). Sometimes it’s up to individuals or communities. There has been some effort in recent years to help preserve ATL hip-hop cultural history, for example, such as Cee-Lo Green recently purchasing Rico Wade’s house in order to put a museum there to the Dungeon family, but that’s not really the city or state doing that, that’s community self-preservation… which is important, too, but not the same as the state or federal government stepping in.
Some of the impact of the localizing of historical memory and preservation is actually being discussed on a series NPR has been doing recently:
this is something that is really very alien to far too many Americans these days. It wasn’t always that way, but it is now. That’s why we have governments in the modern age, in part to represent our best interests. Yes, it can be twisted and abused, but it doesn’t have to be.
