In memoriam

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Crushingly long lists of architectural sites destroyed in this week's Los Angeles fires are circulating. One I have not seen mentioned is Richard Neutra's Freedman House, on the Palisades bluffs. Several other Neutra structures may well be lost, both in Pacific Palisades and Altadena. Dozens of classics of residential modernism are gone. Gregory Ain's entire Park Planned development, with its colorful, variegated façades (second photo), is no more. Add to this libraries, museums, archives, schools, churches, synagogues, art collections, artists' studios, writers' studies, and thousands of individual life stories. Lawrence Schoenberg, son of Arnold Schoenberg, lost his home in Pacific Palisades, out of which he ran Belmont Music Publishers, devoted to his father's music. There is no way to calculate the totality of the loss.