Charred chimneys are all that's left of these LA midcentury homes. Inside the quest to save them

The Guardian

15 hours ago

By mid-morning last Thursday, Evan Hall was standing near the top of Monument Street in Los Angeles's Pacific Palisades, looking out over the Pacific Ocean. He was running out of time.
Hall stood in the charred ruins of a 1953 home designed by the modernist architect Richard Neutra. Beside him, a handful of hard-hat-clad preservationists, masons and construction workers all looked up at the same thing: a chimney.
It was all that remained of the home consumed by January's massive wildfires, and the reason they'd all gathered. For months, Hall and his team have been scrambling to salvage and relocate chimneys from several of the Palisades' architecturally and historically significant homes – a task that has been both logistically and financially formidable. Now, they were facing a 30 June deadline – set by the Army Corps of Engineers, which is overseeing the post-fire cleanup – to finish this monumental task.
Hall, an artist and founding director of the non-profit House Museum, had organized the group as part of Project Chimney, the preservation initiative he is spearheading. Hall himself had evacuated during the fire, and as he reeled in the days and weeks that followed it, the chimneys that dotted the burnt landscape moved him as symbols of the depth of the loss. Project Chimney aims to use them to create a memorial for the community, at an as-yet-unidentified site. The group is petitioning the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy for a location, Hall said, and in the meantime the chimneys will be held in storage.
'Other organizations went through the grounds and said: 'Oh, there's nothing here, the structure's burned,'' Hall said. 'But nobody was looking for what could be salvaged.'
Hall and his collaborators have been workshopping their process on the fly. First, they identified over 55 surviving historically significant chimneys, including some designed by architectural titans such as Neutra, as well as Frank Lloyd Wright Jr, Eric Lloyd Wright, Paul R Williams, and Ray Kappe. 'We began just kind of placing the images next to one another, trying to understand the different design sensibilities,' he said. 'And it was actually really beautiful and surprising to see the range and diversity.'
They began reaching out to homeowners to ask if they'd be open to having their chimneys salvaged, and ultimately narrowed their list to seven.
But raising the money has been challenging and slow, Hall said. On top of that the Army Corps – which has for the last six months been methodically cleaning the mangled, toxic waste left by the fires – accelerated the timeline to finish the cleanup. While the Corps has been supportive of Hall and his team's work, it also needs to finish its debris removal in the Palisades, and as of 26 June had given the group a deadline of 30 June to finish removing the chimneys.
Major Matt Grussing, deputy commander of the Army Corps' emergency field office for the Palisades, has been coordinating with Hall and Project Chimney as the Corps nears the end of its debris removal work. 'We're trying to be as flexible as we can while still meeting our primary mission of ending the public health and safety emergency,' he said.
Project Chimney successfully moved its first chimney, designed by Ray Kappe, at the end of May. The Neutra chimney on Monument was the second, and the group had scrambled to secure the funds and crew to make its relocation happen. Hall had no idea if he would be able to move the other five before the demolition crews rolled in.
All around the house on Monument, lots had already been cleared, with flat, orderly dirt squares replacing the wreckage, and bent metal and ash the fire left in its wake. 1367 Monument's mess – shards of porcelain, bedsprings and a chimney – stood out even more in late June because of this. New plants were growing in the neighborhood, green mingling with the char. Over the crest down towards the ocean, the wooden scaffolding of new home construction was popping up, too.
Andy Gerber, a mason and president of the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers Local 4, had come out to volunteer his time and expertise. He felt respect for the handiwork he saw as he and his colleagues chipped away at the mortar.
'It was all just built correctly, nice and plumb, flat, good lines, and the bond was good,' he said. 'I think just the stone itself is beautiful.'
'I've never done anything like this,' he added. 'I'm hopeful that it works.'
Ean Frank, a preservationist, watched as the team prepped the chimney for removal. He had designed their process, which involved building a steel cage around the chimney itself and disassembling it in large pieces, in an effort to alter the chimney as little as possible.
The group is 'trying to preserve the patina of the fire,' Frank said.
Usually, he added, he would have months to plan for a project of this scale, plus substantial budgets to work with and manpower to support. The improvisation meant dealing with issues such as sandstone unexpectedly crumbling off the chimney's facade, as it was doing today, while the group prepared to move the first section, which Frank estimated weighed 7,000lbs. But he felt like he needed to be involved.
'The idea that the chimneys are the only thing that remains of these people's memories is incredibly profound,' Frank said. 'This disaster and the memories they have here won't just be paved over.'
Lynn Fehr, 97, visited the site at Monument for the first time last week, as Project Chimney ramped up its work. She lived in the home for 65 years and raised her five children there.
The house spoke to her on both emotional and architectural levels. She had become interested in Neutra after hearing his wife Dione speak at a University of California, Los Angeles, event, she said, and fell in love with his work's clean lines. She loved waking up early to look at the Santa Monica Bay and Palos Verdes and even sometimes Catalina Island in the distance from the bluff.
As for the chimney project, she found it perplexing at first. 'I've never heard of chimneys being saved,' she said. But she liked the idea and agreed to it, even though she had no particular fondness for the fireplace. She hardly remembered using it beyond the first year she lived there, when everything felt shiny and new.
It took her six months to finally come see the ruins. When she did, the chimney team was working. She brought two of her children with her for support, and told them to bring tissues for her. But when she arrived, something strange happened.
'I had no sense of loss,' she said. The house had served its purpose.
'We had a marvelous time living there. We enjoyed it while we had it,' she said. 'What can you do with something when you can't change anything?'
A week later, past the deadline, Project Chimney had managed to relocate a third chimney. As of 3 July, the Army Corps still had about 75 of 4,000 clearance requests left in the Palisades, Major Grussing said.
All of the chimneys on Hall's list were still standing. He was hopeful he could get to them in time.