The Topanga Ranch Motel stood as a cheerful landmark along the Pacific Coast Highway for nearly 100 years before it was consumed by the Palisades Fire. The sight of it always brought instant nostalgia for the tiny beach shacks that used to be sprinkled along the coastline before they were steadily replaced by view-blocking McMansions. As one of the last surviving examples of bungalow-style motel architecture, this site was featured in many films and TV shows, including Mannix (1967-1975) and Blue City (1986). Publishing magnate William Randolph Hurst constructed the motel in 1929, and over the years, its cheerful red and white bungalows housed the construction workers who built the Pacific Coast Highway, writers in search of a quiet place to finish a script, and families who wanted to enjoy the soft white sand of Malibu’s shores.
For Angelenos, the Topanga Ranch Motel was always a welcome sight, preserving a glimpse of Los Angeles as it was when the movie industry was just getting started. The motel survived a demolition attempt by developers in the 1980s, and California State Parks acquired the property in 2001. The motel sat derelict for 20 years, but the plans to renovate and reopen it as a piece of living history will now never come to be. Film fans will never again see the Topanga Ranch Motel on the highway that winds from the Palisades to Camarillo unless they put on some old episodes of Remington Steele.
Twenty-five miles to the northeast of the Palisades, the Zane Grey Estate in Altadena was destroyed by the Eaton Fire. Built in 1907, it was a magnificent Mediterranean Revival-style mansion offering views north toward the rugged foothills and south toward the Arroyo Seco. Grey was one of the creators of the genre of Western novels, and he founded his own movie production company to bring his stories to the screen. Grey was not only one of the first authors to see his novels turned into films but also one of the first to be disgusted by the liberties filmmakers took with his stories and characters. Many of the tropes in Westerns began with Grey’s books and films, and his home, where so many stories and scripts were penned, is a loss to film history. The irony is that the Zane Grey Estate had been constructed out of concrete in order to be fireproof, as its first owner was a survivor of the deadly Iroquois Theater Fire that happened in Chicago in 1903.
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“…the time will come to encourage the stewards of what remains to work harder than ever to protect and preserve the historic film sites of Los Angeles.”
The Eaton Fire also claimed the McNally House. This Victorian mansion was built in 1887 for Andrew McNally, who emigrated from Ireland and made his fortune in printing and publishing. With its round tower, deep veranda, lavishly carved wood trim, and distinctive diamond-shaped glass window panes, it was a favorite site for location scouts in need of a posh backdrop. The HBO series Entourage was filmed at the McNally house, which offered the right touch of Gilded Age luxury to a show about a modern generation hitting the big time in Los Angeles. Now, a few chimney stacks are all that remains of this home.
The Will Rogers House, the Zane Grey Estate, and the McNally House were all on the National Register of Historic Places, a federal list that identifies buildings worthy of preservation because of their historic and artistic value. The Topanga Ranch Motel was eligible for listing on the Register but can now never be added. Each of these structures was a bespoke creation, made using materials and techniques that do not exist anymore. Just as it’s impossible to recreate the many silent films whose reels were lost when their nitrate film burned in warehouse fires, these architectural bits of film history can never be exactly rebuilt.
These losses are painful, but the sadness is tempered by gratitude for what was saved. Some beloved locations with ties to filmmaking cannot be recovered. But when movie fans have finished mourning these losses, the time will come to encourage the stewards of what remains to work harder than ever to protect and preserve the historic film sites of Los Angeles.
T.Q. Townsend is the host of the Children’s Literature Podcast. A native of Los Angeles, she started out covering the film beat for Foothill community newspapers and now writes fiction for children and reviews film, theater productions, and children’s books.
