Eames House Threatened by Palisades Fire (Updated)
Photo: CAL FIRE_Official/Flickr
The Palisades Fire that broke out on Tuesday, January 7, has expanded to more than 15,000 acres over the course of two days, growing closer to Case Study House #8, the masterpiece of modern residential architecture designed by Charles and Ray Eames in 1949.
A good deal of my day yesterday was spent looking at live coverage of the wildfires spreading around Los Angeles, the largest of them being the Palisades Fire, named for the residential neighborhood at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains. I occasionally refreshed online maps showing the extents of the fires and the evacuation zones, hoping for the best for the area's residents, obviously, but also taking solace in indications that the neighborhood's most famous architectural work — the Case Study House #8, better known as simply the Eames House — was safe from the fire, even as it sat within the footprint of the mandatory evacuation zone. That changed when I woke up this morning and saw the footprint now literally on the house's doorstep:
Screenshot of CAL FIRE aerial showing extents of Palisades Fire, with note added to indicate location of the Eames House. (Image source)
An Instagram post from the Eames Foundation on Wednesday morning indicates the house was unharmed and the Foundation took precautions to protect the site, removing a small number of objects from the house before evacuating. But concerns over the welfare of the house — and there are many, based on the numerous headlines focused on it and other architectural marvels in the area — single out the eucalyptus trees that surround the house, since their bark and oils make them vulnerable to fire.
Update Jan. 16: Sam Lubell contributes another article for the New York Times, accompanied by heart-wrenching photos of ten “cherished marvels destroyed in the fires,” designed by Richard Neutra, Gregory Ain, Eric Owen Moss, AC Martin, and others. But the news about the Eames House in the article is good: “Though branches had fallen, and its expansive glass windows were covered in fire retardant, the home was largely unharmed. ‘We are incredibly lucky,’ said Lucia Dewey Atwood, the executive director of the Eames Foundation and a granddaughter of the Eameses.”
Eames House, Case Study House #8, Chautauqua Drive, Pacific Palisades, California (Photo: Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress)
Update Jan. 10: An informative article by Sam Lubell at the New York Times points out some of the landmarks and architectural gems that are among the thousands of buildings consumed by flames in the Palisades and other fires burning in Los Angeles. These include numerous buildings at the Will Rogers Ranch, a California State Park; the 1991 Keeler House designed by Ray Kappe, the late co-founder of SCI-Arc; and the Sunset Boulevard House (aka Bridge House) designed by Robert Bridges in 1974. The article also mentions the Eames House and other modern residences — Rodney Walker’s Case Study House #18, Richard Neutra’s Case Study House #20, Eero Saarinen’s Entenza House, Frank Gehry’s new home on Adelaide Drive, Gehry's Schnabel House (1989), and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Sturges House (1939) — that are within the evacuation zone but so far remain unharmed.
Update Jan. 9: An Instagram story from the Eames Foundation indicates that "While it remains at risk, the Eames House, as of 2:00 pm PST on January 9th, was unharmed by the wildfires in the Pacific Palisades":
