Elvis’ Wright House No Longer Stands

It’s upsetting to me that Angelenos are indifferent to their heritage and reckless with its monuments.

According to “Elvis Sightings in L.A.” (by Robert Hilburn, Jan. 8), Elvis occupied a house on Perugia Way in Bel-Air that he believed to have been built by Frank Lloyd Wright, and in 1965 met the Beatles there. Although I had not previously heard of this, I can tell you something about the house.

It was designed and built in 1949 for P.J. Healy by Lloyd Wright, son of the more famous Frank. He was one of L.A.’s most important and interesting avant-garde architects, with buildings like the Wayfarers Chapel, the first two shells for the Hollywood Bowl and the Sowden House to his credit. Photographs show the Perugia Way house to be a graceful and optimistic view of the future: a Usonian ranch house nestled in the bowl of a concrete flying saucer that hovers over the golf course below.

The house and its address no longer exist. It happens all the time, but I am bewildered as to how and why a historically and architecturally significant building can be torn down. Why is this allowed? To make room for the kitschy and grandiose neo-baroque structure that sits there now?

GREG STANTON

Pasadena