Crushingly long lists of architectural sites destroyed in this week's Los Angeles fires are circulating. One I have not seen mentioned is Richard Neutra's Freedman House, on the Palisades bluffs. Neutra's Hees House, on Trino Way, and his Kesler House, on Monument Street, are also lost. Many other classics of residential modernism are gone, in both Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Gregory Ain's Park Planned development, with its colorful, variegated façades, has suffered catastrophic damage; only a handful of the twenty-eight structures are still standing. Add to this libraries, museums, archives, schools, churches, synagogues, art collections, artists' studios, writers' studies, and thousands of individual life stories. The entire archive of the Theosophical Society of America was destroyed in the Eaton fire. Houses that once belonged to Will Rogers, Zane Grey, Andrew McNally, and Henry Mather Greene are no more. Lawrence Schoenberg, son of Arnold Schoenberg, lost his home in Pacific Palisades, out of which he ran Belmont Music Publishers, devoted to his father's music. There is no way to calculate the totality of the loss.
