Marilyn Monroe’s Los Angeles Home Center of Demolition Fight

The home where Marilyn Monroe lived her final days could soon become a pile of rubble.

Brinah Milstein, daughter of Cleveland developer Michael Milstein, and her husband, reality TV producer Roy Bank, are looking to tear down the Brentwood home that Monroe bought six months before her death in 1962, but they are facing some legal headwinds, Bloomberg reported.

The couple bought the property, at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive, last year for nearly $8.4 million, or $3,182 per square foot. It is next door to a residential lot they’ve owned since 2016. Soon after buying it, they secured a demolition permit, and preservationists lobbied the city of Los Angeles to designate the house where Monroe died as a historic-cultural monument, stopping the wrecking ball in the process.

The couple is awaiting an answer from the Los Angeles County Superior Court to move forward with the demolition of the 2,260-square-foot, two-bedroom Spanish-style home. The plan is to combine the site with their residence next door, but the home’s landmark status restricts their property rights.

“L.A. has thousands of celebrities who live and die here,” their attorney Peter Sheridan told Bloomberg. “Is every house that those good folks lived in a ‘historic monument’? Not in the least.” The lawsuit claimed “there is not a single piece of the house that includes any physical evidence that Ms. Monroe ever spent a day at the house.”

Monroe bought the house for $75,000, which would be a little over $800,000 today, adjusted for inflation. It was the first residence she bought on her own after marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller. While living there, she won a Golden Globe and gave her infamous “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” performance for John F. Kennedy. The home has had 14 owners in the half-century since her death and has undergone several renovations and additions including a recreation room and studio.

Bank and Milstein are open to saving the home by relocating it to a more public site as privacy has become an issue for the couple, and tour groups and drones swarm their cul-de-sac.

— Chris Malone Méndez