Homes and Landmarks Lost or Damaged by LA Wildfires: Updates
Adam Brody and Leighton Meester’s house on fire in the Pacific Palisades.
Photo: SPOT-Stoianov-BUFR/Backgrid
The devastation of the wildfires consuming greater Los Angeles is hard to comprehend. In the days since the fires first started — breaking out in the Pacific Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, Lidia, and Sunset — the news out of the region has been a steady list of lives lost, homes burned, and local landmarks reduced to rubble. We don’t yet know the true scale of what’s gone, but the homes of public figures and places of architectural significance are among the earliest confirmed to have burned. Here’s what we know so far.
The Will Rogers Ranch, after the fire.
Photo: © California State Parks, all rights reserved.
The California State Park Service confirmed on Wednesday that the Will Rogers Ranch and the Topanga Ranch Motel, once owned by William Randolph Hearst, had both burned, along with several hundred acres of parkland. “California State Parks mourns the loss of these treasured natural and cultural resources, and our hearts go out to everyone impacted by the devastating fires in the Los Angeles area,” said State Parks Director Armando Quintero in a statement.
Photo: Backgrid
Crystal, who has lived in the Palisades for more than 40 years, lost his home in the blaze. “Words cannot describe the enormity of the devastation we are witnessing and experiencing,” Crystal and his wife, Janice, wrote in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. “Janice and I lived in our home since 1979. We raised our children and grandchildren here. Every inch of our house was filled with love.”
Levy fled his home in the Palisades on Tuesday. “The smoke looked pretty black and intense over Temescal Canyon,” Levy told the Los Angeles Times. TMZ reported that Levy’s home was destroyed in the fire. Levy himself has not yet commented.
Photo: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
The Andrew McNally House in Altadena, a Queen Anne mansion built by the mapmaking tycoon in the late 1880s, has reportedly burned. The nine-bedroom house, which sold a few years ago for $3 million, had been meticulously restored, with all 24 of its gas lamps and ornate steam radiators in working order.
Hilton bought the beachfront three-bedroom, three-bathroom Malibu home in 2021 for $8 million. She posted to Instagram on Wednesday that the house was gone. “Sitting with my family, watching the news, and seeing our home in Malibu burn to the ground on live TV is something no one should ever have to experience,” Hilton wrote.
Montag and Pratt confirmed on Tuesday night that their Palisades home, which they had moved into a few years ago, burned down in the fires. “Nightmare came true,” Pratt posted with a video of the fire. “I’m just praying for everyone else who’s going through this,” Montag said in an Instagram Story. On Wednesday morning, Pratt also posted that his parents house was gone as well. “The one positive sign I saw as our house burned down,” Pratt wrote on Instagram. “was our son’s bed burned in the shape of a heart.”
Meester and Brody’s five-bedroom, six-bedroom house, which they bought in 2019 for $6.5 million, was reported to be burned down. A video on NBC shows just a mass of rubble left behind. The pair have not yet commented.
Palisades High.
Photo: Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
A number of historic and cultural landmarks have been lost to the fires, including the Palisades Library, captured burning in a local news report, Palisades High, featured in a number of movies, and the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, which was reduced to rubble. The Zorthian Ranch, an artists’ colony in Altadena, was destroyed, as well, with many of the animals running into the woods. Theatre Palisades and Pierson Playhouse wrote on their website that all operations are suspended until further notice “owing to serious damage sustained in the Palisades fire.”
Photo: Backgrid/BACKGRID
“Page Six” posted photos of Goodman’s home, which he reportedly purchased in 2008, burned to rubble. Images included a blackened swimming pool in the backyard. Goodman has not yet commented.
Photo: Backgrid
Hopkins lost his four-bedroom, five-bathroom Colonial that he bought in 2019 for $6 million. “Page Six” posted a photo of the house burned to the ground.
TMZ reported that Faris’s home, which she bought for $4.9 million in 2018, also burned down. The house was a LEED-certified home and had a number of ecofriendly elements — solar-power utilities, water-filtration recycling, and a Tesla charger. “Anna and her family are safe and very grateful,” a spokesperson for Faris told People.
Photo: Backgrid
Teller and his wife, Keleigh, bought a $7.5 million five-bedroom, seven-bathroom Cape Cod–style house just two years ago. “Page Six” obtained a photo showing that it had also burned down.
Reel Inn, before the fire.
Photo: Reel Inn
Several iconic Malibu restaurants on the Pacific Coast Highway also burned: the Reel Inn, Moonshadows, and Cholada Thai.
The Ray Kappe Keeler house, as shown in listing photos, is considered an exemplar of Southern California modernist architecture by one of the founders of SCI-Arc.
Photo: Tim Street-Porter/Crosby Doe Associates
The cantilevered, open plan home, designed with redwood planks and a floating hearth fireplace, is considered one of Kappe’s finest works. Kappe was one of the founders of SCI-Arc, or Southern California Institute of Architecture, an avant-garde school of architecture, and the house is considered an iconic example of California modernist design. The home’s original and current owner, Anne Keeler, told the New York Times that a neighbor confirmed that it had burned down.
Woods live-tweeted videos of his neighborhood going up in flames from the Ring camera on his house. “One day you’re swimming in the pool, and the next day it’s all gone,” he said on CNN.
Gibson learned his five-bedroom, five-bathroom Malibu mansion burned down after he returned from taping The Joe Rogan Experience. He had been trying to sell the home, which he bought in 2008 for $11.5 million. “I have never seen a place so perfectly burnt,” he told NewsNation. “You could put it in an urn.”
Like so many others, Ventimiglia watched his ocean-view home burn down on his security cameras. “You start thinking about all the memories in different parts of the house and whatnot,” he told CBS News on his first sight of the remains of his home, which he bought in 2022 for $4.4 million. “And then you see your neighbors’ houses and everything, kind of around, and your heart just breaks.”
Bridges’s four-bedroom Malibu home was passed down from his late parents, who had owned the house since the late 1950s. (Bridges shares the house with his siblings, and it was previously rented out.) He confirmed to the Hollywood Reporter that it had burned down.
Mathison posted videos of his Altadena home, where he’s lived for a decade, as it burned. “I’ve lost my home and everything that I own. I have this hoodie and a pair of pants and two pairs of sneakers left. That’s it,” he told Good Morning America. “It is still very unsettling and so surreal. And again, thinking about the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that are going through the same thing, it’s just devastating.”
Moore evacuated earlier this week and returned to find her Altadena home damaged, but not totally destroyed, by the fire. She posted pictures on Instagram of its destruction, with most of it burned down. According to People, Moore had spent years renovating the house, which she bought in 2017 for a reported $2.56 million. “Miraciously, the main part of our house is still standing. For now. It’s not livable but mostly intact,” Moore wrote on Instagram.
Baz bought her three-bedroom house in Altadena in 2020 and renovated it with a butter-yellow kitchen as its centerpiece. On Thursday night, Baz posted a picture of that kitchen on Instagram Stories, writing, “The last photo I took before we lost it all. We’ll recover someday. Thank you to the village.”
Elwes posted videos of him and his wife evacuating from Malibu on Tuesday night. The next day, he shared on Instagram that his house had burned down. “Sadly, we did lose our home, but we are grateful to have survived this truly devastating fire,” Elwes wrote. “Our hearts go out to all the families impacted by this tragic event.”
Lake gave a play-by-play of her and her husband’s efforts to save their Malibu home before they eventually had to evacuate. “Ross and I lost our dream home,” Lake posted on Instagram. “This description ‘dream home’ doesn’t suffice. It was our heaven on earth. The place where we planned to grow old together.” Lake had purchased the property years before she began building in 2019. “My new #malibu home is happening! I bought this sacred property 5 1/2 years ago and it’s finally taking shape,” she wrote that August, sharing photos of the structure as it went up.
Photo: Mike Heberger/Susan Pickering Photography/Pasadena Foothills MLS
The historic Mediterranean Revival mansion of the famous western novelist, with “a library larger than most people’s homes,” was destroyed, according to the New York Times. Designed by Myron Hunt, the architect who also designed the Rose Bowl and the Ambassador Hotel, and Elmer Grey, the house was built of reinforced concrete and was considered to be one of the earliest fireproof structures in the area.
Also known as the Sunset Boulevard house, the Bridges house was especially memorable to everyone driving west on that road to the Pacific Ocean — it looked like it was floating precariously off the cliff. Designed by Robert Bridges, a University of Southern California real estate professor who once worked as an architect and builder, the redwood-clad house sits on giant reinforced concrete stilts, with a balcony overlooking the canyon. Bridges bought the steep site for just $40,000 in 1979 (“the only thing I could afford,” he told the New York Times), and spent six years building the house and much of the furniture himself, alongside a small crew. He would go on to raise his family here. The Los Angeles Conservancy confirmed the building was destroyed in a Facebook post.
On Thursday, Knowles, the mother of Beyoncé and Solange, shared on Instagram that her Malibu waterfront bungalow had been destroyed. Alongside a video of dolphins bobbing in the water, she wrote, “It was my favorite place, my sanctuary , my sacred Happy Place. Now it is gone !!”
According to People, photos confirmed that the couple’s house had burned down. The How I Met Your Mother actor and Saturday Night Live alum bought this five-bedroom, six-bathroom home in 2017, and lived there with their two daughters.
The founder of the Corcoran Group and Shark Tank star shared on a Thursday Instagram post that the entire Tahitian Terrace Mobile Home Park, which she called “my little slice of heaven,” had been destroyed on Tuesday. Located across from Will Rogers Beach, the community was created in 1963 and has approximately 250 homes on the property along with amenities like a club house and a recreation center. In her post, Corcoran shared a GoFundMe that she had set up for her neighbors, “many of them seniors who poured their hearts and life-savings into their trailers, left with absolutely nothing.”
