The city has argued<\/a> that the owners were aware that \u201cthe property was a known destination for tourists and a candidate for future landmark status\u201d. In other words, they knew that Monroe<\/a> would always define the house. Her legacy is its destiny.<\/p>\n But if we understand Fifth Helena as a monument, then it is imperative to reflect on what exactly the house memorialises. In my recent research<\/a>, I explored what the house meant to Monroe in her lifetime. I also traced how the very architectural design of the house raises issues around memory, place and the legends that emerge from both.<\/p>\n Monroe was born in Los Angeles in 1926 and lived across various parts of the city throughout her unsettled childhood. 12305 was built just three years later in Brentwood, a sought-after neighbourhood developed in the early 1900s. Stars and studio executives alike made their homes there; but at around 2,000 square feet, standing on one of the Helena Drive culs-de-sac, 12305 was a comparatively unassuming property. <\/p>\n On the one hand, the homeliness of Fifth Helena and its privileged environs contrasted the domestic instability of Monroe\u2019s early years. On the other, the Spanish-colonial revival design of 12305 \u2013 red tile roof, white stucco exterior and casement windows \u2013 tells its own story of a troubled past.<\/p>\n As architectural historians have established, the popularity of revival architecture from the late 19th century through the 1930s<\/a> spoke to fantastic reimaginings of California\u2019s history<\/a>. Bell towers and arcades gestured artfully back to Spanish colonial missions, neglecting the violence such communities inflicted on indigenous people<\/a>. The Mediterranean aesthetic of courtyards, tiling and stucco construction presented a racially charged privileging of European influences over Mexican tradition<\/a> in southern California.<\/p>\n Postwar popular culture and tourism<\/a> would go on, however, to position Mexico itself as a desirable, escapist landscape. By the time Monroe had purchased 12305 in 1962, she would describe it as \u201can authentic little Mexican house\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n In the less than 40 years since its construction, the house had shifted from a quintessential example of revival myths to an expression of once-denied Mexican heritage. Just as the single event of Monroe\u2019s death has inspired endless speculation, this single dwelling on Fifth Helena attests to generations of romanticisation and disavowal.<\/p>\n The house has also provided a concrete setting for tragic retellings of Monroe\u2019s final months, though Monroe herself saw the house as a site of possibility. <\/p>\n In letters to family and comments to friends<\/a>, Monroe praised the privacy gate, the security of thick walls and barred windows, and the manageable yard surrounding her pool. She travelled to Mexico to find furnishings for her new house and invited those closest to her to stay \u201cas long as [they] wanted to\u201d.<\/p>\n Monroe envisioned her home as a sanctuary \u201cfor any friends of mine who are in some kind of trouble\u201d<\/a>. She found the now-famous tile on the doorstep reading cursum perficio<\/em> \u2013 journey\u2019s end \u2013 to be a hopeful statement. Monroe wanted to live in this house.<\/p>\n The very features that Monroe admired would assume morbid connotations in the recollections of her intimate friends, one of whom described the house<\/a> as \u201csmall, never-to-be-completed, [with] cold, uncertain, incomplete rooms\u201d. Most damning was the fact that the house\u2019s so-called \u201cMexican style\u201d interior d\u00e9cor closely resembled that of Monroe\u2019s psychiatrist, Ralph Greenson. Some of her inner circle found this to be a symptom of Monroe\u2019s lack of personal taste and by extension a cohesive personal identity<\/a>. <\/p>\n What this opinion neglects, though, is that Monroe had spent part of 1961 residing in one of singer Frank Sinatra\u2019s homes. As a friend (and sometimes romantic partner), Sinatra had lent Monroe a house designed by architect Paul R. Williams<\/a>. <\/p>\n Built in the mid-1950s, it presented a modernist alternative to the revival fancy of Fifth Helena Drive \u2013 East Asian-inspired d\u00e9cor; the latest sound and television technology; a black, grey, white and orange colour palette. In choosing 12305, then, Monroe was not simply mirroring her psychiatrist; she was making an informed choice between two different aesthetics. But over time, the effort to make the house fit posthumous grim narratives has obscured Monroe\u2019s agency as homemaker.<\/p>\n The idea of Monroe\u2019s private house as a public destination, much less a monument, would likely have unsettled the star. As she remarked<\/a> in preparations for her final interview: \u201cI don\u2019t want everybody to see exactly where I live [\u2026] Do you know the [play] Everyman? Well, I want to stay just in the fantasy of Everyman.\u201d <\/p>\nTroubled beginnings<\/h2>\n
A place of possibility<\/h2>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/counter.theconversation.com\/content\/281919\/count.gif\")
<\/p>\n