Beverly Hills finally passed a historic preservation ordinance in early 2012, but they're apparently still letting all kinds of significant buildings be torn down. Earlier this week, the LA Times reported that a developer has razed Ira Gershwin's old house on Roxbury Drive, which had been "extensively remodel[ed]" by John Elgin Woolf--he intends to build "a two-story, 10,400-square-foot Cape Cod Revival house." Now a tipster (who's confirmed with the city) brings word of another house, also by a great architect and with a pretty good back story, that could be about to bite the dust: 805 North Linden was designed by Old Hollywood starchitect Wallace Neff and, on top of that, Howard Hughes famously crashed his airplane into it back on July 7, 1946. (See Martin Scorsese's dramatic recreation below.) The house came up for sale in April 2012 and sold this past June for $6.2455 million, and now our tipster says there's a 30-day notice up for a demolition permit and a notice that the owners have applied for new construction permits. Well, as one real estate agent told the LAT, "Tastes have changed ? The kinds of houses people want today aren't reflected in the old stock."
· Buy the Bev Hills House Howard Hughes Crashed a Plane Into [Curbed LA]
· Early Wallace Neff Spanish Colonial in Beverly Hills [Curbed LA]
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