Ray Bradbury’s Home Demolished

The house where author Ray Bradbury lived for over 50 years went on sale last year. You can get a good look at it in the real estate listing photos. Renowned architect Thom Mayne and his wife purchased the house for $1.67 million. And Friday they had it torn down.

The discussion under all these stories, and the post at Metafilter, divides fans into two camps: those who don't want to see history being demolished, and those who say this is no big deal. Both have valid points.

Those who regret seeing the house torn down are sad that it wasn’t preserved for its historical value. It could have been made into a museum. It was a perfectly habitable house, built in 1937, with some interesting architectural details.

Others say the house was outdated and not particularly significant in its architecture. Bradbury’s legacy lives on in his writings. And no one wants to live in a house with only three bedrooms. If fans wanted to preserve it, they should have bought it. One commenter pointed out that if every home in Los Angeles where a celebrity once lived were preserved, there could be no new homes built.

(Image source: Redfin)

What do you think?

Did they burn the books inside the house, too?

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Progress is often hampered by this form of sentimentality. Bradbury was a man, not a house. He left us his works, do we need to preserve where he slept, ate or took a dump? Clearly the new owners thought not (but we can still look at the photos). It seems, at least in the UK, everything is held in aspic if someone famous farted in a place.

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Really interesting article, MC.

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It's a California thing... There is no history in the area. There are no historical artifacts to dig-up... no point in buying a metal detector. No great battles were fought in the area. With select few exception, nobody occupied any of it until a few hundred years ago, and the vast majority far, FAR more recently. History is just not a "thing" in California for those reasons and more, it's something that exists elsewhere...

And now with the entire population migrating further south-west every year, it's gone beyond "full" and property that your parents could have purchased for a few month's wages is now worth tens of millions. Ranch houses are replaced with McMansions, apartments & condos are built everywhere they can be, commercial buildings being replaced with high-rises, and there's no sign of the trend reversing.

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