Frank Mayor saw it burning from blocks away, and he just knew — the McNally House was lost.
Flames engulfed the landmark Altadena mansion, originally built for mapmaking tycoon Andrew McNally during the last decade of the 19th century and purchased in 2021 by Mayor and his wife, Huan Gu.
The McNally House was one of a growing number of historic homes reduced to ashes in the week since the deadly, wind-whipped blazes tore across Los Angeles County. As of Monday, Jan. 13, the Eaton and Palisades fires have destroyed more than 12,000 structures, according to Cal Fire.
It was almost a week ago when Mayor and Gu — he’s president and CEO of Cinevision Global Inc. and she’s a Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties agent — watched the Eaton fire move north as they headed off to bed. About an hour and a half before sunrise Wednesday, Jan. 8, they awoke to evacuation orders.
“It was dark, and I didn’t see any flames,” Mayor said by phone Friday, Jan. 10, adding that he thought the order was just a precaution.
The couple packed their white Maltipoo pup, Peaches, and two small suitcases into one of their two cars and drove to Pasadena, where they got a hotel room. A few hours later, Mayor returned to Altadena to check up on his home.
“When I got there, there was one fire truck,” he said. “The firefighters were just standing there, watching the thing burn. They told me they tried to put it out, but they ran out of water. Unfortunately, we lost everything, but we’re not the only ones.”
The other big historic house in the neighborhood, directly north of Pasadena, was the Mediterranean Revival-style estate of Western author Zane Grey.
Although originally built for Chicago businessman Arthur Woodward in 1907 by the Pasadena architectural partnership of Myron Hunt and Elmer Grey, Grey (no relation to the architect) bought it in 1920.
“I haven’t visited the Zane Grey House or the McNally House, and now I’m lamenting I never did — because we think they’re always going to be there and now there’s nothing left, which is incredibly hard to wrap your head around,” said Adrian Scott Fine, president and CEO of the Los Angeles Conservancy. “In preservation, we have experienced losses before but never to this extent, all at once.”
Also see: Landmarks and businesses destroyed by Eaton, Palisades fires in LA County
The nonprofit organization whose mission is to preserve the historic, architectural and cultural resource of L.A. County has been tracking historic landmarks confirmed lost to the fires at its website.
In the Palisades fire, the losses include the former 1920s ranch house and barn of cowboy humorist and philosopher Will Rogers, the cantilevered Keeler House, which noted architect Ray Kappe remodeled for jazz singer Anne Keeler and her then-husband Gordon Melcher in the early 1990s, and the Robert Bridges House, a modernist house from the 1970s designed by the architect to suspend high above Sunset Boulevard.
The list of historic properties destroyed by the fires grew over the weekend.
With high winds expected through Wednesday, L.A. Conservancy is also monitoring a group of significant mid-20th century modernist Case Study homes and others in and around the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that remain undamaged but under threat. Among these is the longtime home of husband-and-wife design pioneers Charles and Ray Eames.
They built the Eames House, also known as Case Study House No. 8, in 1949 and never left. Today, it is a historic house museum maintained by the Eames Foundation and a National Historic Landmark.
Another is the Entenza House, or Case Study House No. 9. It was the home of John Entenza, the editor of Arts and Architecture magazine, who started the Case Study program.
“We’re hopeful that they survive and make it out of this,” Fine said, adding that post-fire, L.A. Conservancy plans to mobilize resources, from funding to access to preservationists, structural engineers and architects for landmarks that have been destroyed.
But he added, “Whether it’s a capital ‘h’ historic or not, every house represents stories for every single family. It’s not just about: What are we losing architecturally or culturally? It’s much deeper than that. These communities and neighborhoods and shopping districts that we love, the thought of them not being there hits you very hard.”
Mayor and Gu spent the past three years restoring the original character of their Victorian-era Queen Anne-style mansion, where they often hosted gatherings.
In the octagonal Turkish room, an artist meticulously painted over the areas where water damaged the original silk-covered ceiling under which the couple hosted parties, concerts and other events for different community organizations in which they were active.
They restored the aviary, replacing rotten wood and repainting the structure.
And they were building a pool.
The pool was nearly complete before the fire, and now it and chimney are all that remain in the rubble.
As the couple weighs their options, they acknowledge any new construction is unlikely to match the one-of-a-kind appeal of the house that initially attracted them to the neighborhood.
They became the first new owners in 66 years after the family of Frank and Johanna Dupuy, the couple who saved the McNally home from demolition in 1955, slowly restored it and got it listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
“It took us almost four years to find the right buyer,” son Pierre Dupuy told Southern California News Group on the morning after Mayor and Gu picked up the keys to their new home over cocktails in 2021.
Gu shared several pictures of the home with Southern California News Group, including one with the Dupuy family as they gathered at the house for their last meal as owners of the home, concerts and restoration work.
“We loved that house, and not only us—people in the community really loved and treasured that house, too,” Gu said. “Sometimes we feel like that house belonged to the community. But it was our loving home.”