The Lost Treasures of California's Devastating Wildfires

It’s been more than three weeks since the beginning of the Los Angeles area wildfires and the level of devastation is overwhelming. The numbers are stark: The fires killed 28 people and incinerated more than 16,000 structures. Officials peg the economic damage at $150 billion or more, with insurance companies expecting losses of $30 billion.

We’ve also seen the heartbreaking images of our fellow Californians combing through the wreckage looking for their beloved pets and remnants of their lives. My wife is a Red Cross volunteer and I can’t stand hearing the tragic stories after she returns from a service call.

In this fast-paced social-media-dominated world, we all jump to various policy conclusions. I’ve done so myself, as I’ve ruminated in previous columns about the various insurance, land use, wildfire prevention, and water policies that exacerbated the situation. These are important issues and need to be hashed out, especially as the state and federal governments consider aid packages and regulatory relief to speed up the rebuilding process.

But sometimes it’s best to step back and just react in a human way, by mourning the losses. And boy have there been some major ones, especially on the architectural front. Early on, I experienced something of a panic when I read reports that some of LA’s most notable architectural treasures had been destroyed or were threatened. Fortunately, many reports were incorrect.

“Some early news coverage and social-media chatter implied that the TCL Chinese Theatre, Hollywood Bowl, and Magic Castle were close to burning when, in fact, those spots never were in immediate danger,” the Los Angeles Times reported. It noted rumors (thankfully untrue) that the spectacular midcentury Eames house had burned. Pasadena’s Gamble House—the most notable Arts-and-Crafts style home in the nation—reportedly was threatened but also survived.

Other treasures were not so fortunate. Fires claimed the Benedict and Nancy Freedman House, a modernist masterpiece designed by architect Richard Neutra in 1949. Also lost: 21 of 28 of architect Gregory Ain’s Park Planned Homes in Altadena. Also dating to the 1940s, ”This was one of the first modernist housing developments in the country,” per US Modernist, conceived “as a groundbreaking social experiment, with affordable prefabricated homes for working families.”

These treasures are irreplaceable, even if new buildings are rebuilt on the sites. I have a particular love of modernism and the midcentury variety, with their dramatic, earthy details (atriums, beams, aggregate concrete floors, innovative materials, etc.). I live in one of the Sacramento area’s largest neighborhoods of such homes. I can only imagine Altadena residents’ sense of loss.

When I moved to the Los Angeles area from the Midwest in the 1990s, I was smitten by the beauty of the place. Southern Californians often complain about congestion and occasional blight, but there’s just something about those lovely hillsides, swaying palm trees, and views of the mountains and beaches. And I loved the plethora of modernist and Spanish Revival architecture, which defined the areas most prone to fire and mudslides.

I grew up on the East Coast in an area of colonial-era stone and brick houses and appreciate them for their solid construction and understated beauty. I owned a craftsman house in Iowa, with its solid oak detailing. These homes were a reaction to the fussy detailing of the previous Victorian era. I also owned an Art Deco home in Ohio, which managed to be historic and futuristic at the same time, as it epitomized a 1930s-era vision of the future.

Architecture is important. Buildings matter. That’s one of my beefs with the modern urbanist movement, which seems committed to packing as many people as efficiently as possible into little boxes. Yet it’s hard to convey the sense of joy one can experience from living in a house that was thoughtfully designed. There’s no replacing a burned-down historic treasure. Of course, the loss of anyone’s home or business—architecturally significant or not—is painful.

Some of the major architectural victims of the LA wildfires: the Will Rogers Ranch House, the Altadena Community Church, the 1887 Queen-Anne-style Andrew McNally House in Altadena, the Keeler House in Pacific Palisades and others. The New York Times correctly summed up these losses as a “hit to ‘Old California’” and to “L.A.’s spectacular design legacy.” The former reminds us of the state when it was still a frontier and the latter is the result of California’s culture of experimentation.

“A lot of people have lost their lives, but for the community, we’ve lost these things that we feel are part of our common history and part of our heritage, and that’s been really hard,” noted architecture writer Sam Lubell. “It has also reminded me…what a phenomenal heritage that is.”

Indeed. As California regulators and builders gear up for the rebuilding, here’s hoping they allow and create new buildings that are worth mourning if we ever lose them.

This column was first published in The Orange County Register.

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