Fans of Marilyn Monroe have won a battle to preserve her mark on Los Angeles and are a step closer to seeing a towering statue of the actress remain in Palm Springs. The Los Angeles home where Monroe briefly lived and died has been declared a historic cultural monument, while a Palm Springs planning commission decision boosted chances that a 26-feet (eight-metre) statue called Forever Marilyn will stay in place. The Los Angeles City Council voted for the historic designation on Wednesday after a lengthy battle over whether the home in the Brentwood neighbourhood would be demolished, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The current owners live next door and wanted to raze the house in order to expand their estate. The council, however, was unanimous in moving to save it. “There’s no other person or place in the city of Los Angeles as iconic as Marilyn Monroe and her Brentwood home,” Traci Park, the area’s council representative, said before the vote.
The Forever Marilyn sculpture gets a shower from the Palm Springs Fire Department in Palm Springs, California (Jay Calderon/The Orange County Register via AP) They contend the house has been changed so much over the years that it is no longer historic, and that it has become a neighbourhood nuisance because of tourist traffic. The process that led to the designation was “biased, unconstitutional and rigged”, Peter C Sheridan, a lawyer for the owners, said in a statement to The Associated Press. Mr Sheridan asserted that Ms .