I don’t even know if the house is still standing. —my mother, winning the all-time irony award on January 5, 2025
As I write this, my hometown is in flames and rubble. It’s only one of several fires there, and it has burned over ten thousand acres. Five people are dead, including the parent and sibling of a former student of my favourite teacher. My junior high and the church I attended as a child have taken damage. A friend’s parents’ house is gone, along with almost everything they owned. I don’t know about the house I grew up in. Or the landmark two doors down from it. And of course, things that are fine now might not be by the time the fire is finally contained.
What we do know is that the historical Will Rogers house has burned down. Not in the Eaton Fire, I think in the Palisades one, but the fact that you have to distinguish hurts my heart. The Palisades Fire is bigger, roughly seventeen thousand acres. I haven’t been following it as closely, because I grew up in Altadena, but still. The announcement was open that there were much worse damages from the fires. People have lost their homes and livelihoods, and in the broader scheme of things, the home of a man who died ninety years ago doesn’t really matter. But also it does.
The most common article right now about destroyed locations refers to the “Altadena section of Pasadena,” something guaranteed to make any Altadenan twitch. Thanks, AP. So if you want to know that Palisades Charter High School suffered damage but isn’t fully destroyed, well, you know that. Carrie White couldn’t destroy it, and neither did that fire. The Topanga Ranch Motel, already abandoned but in Mannix and Remington Steele. The Reel Inn in Malibu. And Altadena’s own Bunny Museum.
But from what I’ve gleaned from my friends, there’s so much more. So very much more. The band camp scenes from American Pie and the opening of the first Rockford Files movie were both shot at Farnsworth Park, and all the buildings there were destroyed. (I remember going there on a school picnic, and it was one of those places that was walkable from home if I didn’t mind how steep that hill is.) Two of the houses from Marriage Story are in devastated neighbourhoods, even if I can’t find the specifics on any given house right now. Nicole’s mother’s house and the house the Halloween party is at are quite possibly gone.
St. Elizabeth’s Church in Altadena and Westminster Presbyterian, across the street in Pasadena, were destroyed by Martians in War of the Worlds in 1953. I went to St. Elizabeth’s as a child, and the community hall at Westminster was one of the most frequently used places for that sort of thing. I don’t know the state of Westminster, but St. Elizabeth’s is damaged but not destroyed. What was Eliot Middle School when I attended (1989-1991) is damaged but not destroyed, though I suspect it will be unusable for years.
The Walsh house and the McKay house from Beverly Hills, 90210 are in an area that I know was hit hard—a senior center near there burned down, and they were trying very hard to save the library. I don’t yet know if they succeeded. Near there is the McNally house, as in Rand-, which has also been in a wide array of movies. It appears that is gone. The house from Stepbrothers is very near the starting point of the fire and I would be shocked if it’s still standing. Similarly the former St. Luke’s hospital, now owned by CalTech, which I know has been in things.Case Study House #20B, built for Saul Bass and literally around the corner from my childhood home, might be standing but I don’t know.
I can’t find a list of movies that Ronnie’s Automotive was in. My brain suggests “all of them.” Definitely Transformers; it’s where he buys the Transformer. I remember laughing at an episode of Crossing Jordan where she stops there in what is totally Mississippi. After all, the show was normally filmed in Not Boston, so what’s a little Not Mississippi among friends? Similarly, I remember watching a movie with my family that we’d rented at Webster’s wherein you could see Webster’s. From what I know, Webster’s is still there. But Altadena Hardware, the store the movie was actually using as a set, is gone. I don’t remember the movie, but I’ll never forget the moment.
It’s January 9 as I write. It’s so early, and the fact that this fire has been going for days and is still “so early” breaks my heart. Will JPL survive? Will the Rose Bowl? Will the Mount Wilson Observatory, already threatened by fire just a few short years ago? All the other fires are at least slightly contained, but the Eaton Fire rages out of control. I’ll probably keep from posting for a day in the hopes of better news to come.
January 10 now. The fire is 3% contained. Good news and bad news has come in the last twenty-four hours. My daughter’s godmother and her husband lost their home—they’ve actually made a few movies. Some places were lucky, and some are just below the line to which the fire reached. It appears Case Study House #20B is probably safe. St. Luke’s is safe. The fire department is holding firm around JPL, and Mount Wilson has been protected—and with it TV broadcasting throughout LA. Eliot is simultaneously better and worse than I’d heard.
We will probably be months discovering that, oh, that one location from that one thing burned down. From what I can tell the Mountain View Cemetery, used in several episodes of Six Feet Under among other things, is fine, but so much else isn’t. I grieve the loss as a historian, a film buff, and a native Altadenan. This is where they intersect.
If you want to help, there are many ways to do so. GoFundMe has a wildlife relief page, and goodness knows I can find you people who are legit and have their own. L.A. Works has a list of ways to help, including links to ways to help animals. Huntington Health, the hospital where many of my friends were born, has a list of resources for those there. The California Fire Foundation could always use your help. Likewise the California Community Fund. There’s so much devastation and it’s so easy to feel helpless. If you can’t afford to help, you can always just be there for those who need you. Hold your loved ones close and make your own disaster preparedness plans.
This is excellent and it sucks you had to write it. Buildings get torn down all the time but not like this, and I hadn’t realized how much of film geography is here. Earlier today I read a piece by Ann Powers that is mostly about music but touches on the LA fires and the objects lost there, and this seems to intersect:
“It’s true that no irreplaceable object matters as much as a life. Yet beloved things have their own vitality, imbued by our care for them. The things we treasure teach us much; physical encounters with them stimulate parts of our brains that ethereal connections (reading a screen, for example) can’t reach.”
Despite being on a screen, the buildings here are tangible — that’s why they’re on the screen in the first place — with vitality. Losing them means a loss of that connection and frisson the films and TV episodes can provide, and that is a real loss.
What I’ve been saying this week is that people knew Altadena without actually knowing it existed. I’m very used to having to tell people where I’m from, and that didn’t happen this week.
One of my other Facebook friends grew up in Altadena, which I only found out ‘thanks’ to the fires. It’s hard to wrap your head around so much being gone so quickly.
That’s so wild! Would it be anyone I’d know?
IDK, I kept meaning to tag you. Let me see if her account is public.