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Diane Keaton’s quiet activism helped preserve these Los Angeles landmarks
While Oscar-winning actor Diane Keaton was best known for roles in Woody Allen movies and the Godfather saga, she was also a vigorous defender of historic buildings.
People magazine reported Saturday that she passed away at the age of 79.
Keaton had served on the board of the Los Angeles Conservancy and as a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Her activism included efforts to save the Ennis House, an iconic 1920s residence in the Hollywood Hills that was designed by the famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
The Northridge earthquake in 1994 and heavy rains a decade later caused significant damage. The National Trust for Historic Preservation placed the house on its 2005 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.
It was partially restored by the nonprofit Ennis House Foundation, then was purchased and fully restored in 2011. According to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, Keaton called on the Hollywood community to help save the house, which has been featured in numerous films, and eventually joined the Ennis House Foundation board.
Keaton also fought to preserve the Century Plaza Hotel, which was built in the 1960s and also placed on the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2009.
The owners at the time proposed razing the hotel and replacing it with a mixed-use development, which Keaton said “is part of an uninspired assault on 1960s large-scale architecture in Los Angeles.”
But the city approved a project that preserved the hotel as the centerpiece. Rehabilitation began in 2016, and the hotel reopened in 2021, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy.
Efforts to save the 1920-era Ambassador Hotel, however, weren’t successful. An early symbol of the city’s development and the site of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination, the hotel was demolished in 2005 to make way for the construction of a school.
In 2008, Keaton wrote an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times reflecting on the iconic hotel, her childhood memories there, and broader preservation lessons for the city.
“I’ll never understand why architecture is considered a second cousin to painting and film,” she said. “We’ve never been married to our romance with architecture. A building, unlike a canvas or a DVD, is a massive work of art with many diverse uses. We watch movies in buildings. We look at paintings on their walls. We pray in cathedrals. We live inside places we call homes. Home gives us faith in the belief of a well-lived life. When we tear down a building, we are wiping out lessons for the future. If we think of it that way, we will begin to understand the emotional impact of wasting the energy and resources used to build it in the first place.”
