(Photo via latimes.com)

I received an e-mail message today from my friend Dion Neutra, the 80-something son of architect Richard Neutra. Dion said he was glad that his dad -- who passed away in 1970 -- "did not live to experience this loss." He was talking about the early-morning blaze that engulfed and destroyed what was left of Neutra's Laemmle Building, a landmark at the northwest corner of Hollywood and Vine going back to 1933.

"The drastic remodels of the Laemmle started already in the early 40s," Dion wrote, "but I always had this hope that the building could have emerged from all the junk with which it had been shrouded for years." Indeed, what was left of the Laemmle Building -- which Neutra built for Carl Laemmle, the president of Universal, and once housed the Coco Tree restaurant -- wasn't all that: Until this morning, it was the home of the Basque nightclub ("4 RED VELVET private VIP rooms"!), along with DanDee Shoe Repair and the Bloodshot Tattoo parlor. In a way, Laemmle was a perfect expression of where this stretch of the boulevard is now, uneasily pitched between regeneration (Sam Nazarian's Starck-designed S Bar and Katsuya are mere steps away) and the kind of picturesque sleaze that Tom Waits celebrated here. As the Los Angeles Times noted, the fire is the fifth in the area in recent weeks. (The paper, however, did not notice the connection between Basque and its surprising architectural provenance.)

Of course, anything truly Neutra-esque about Laemmle was lost years ago in the ebb and flow of this well-traveled Hollywood crossroads. But it is still striking to contrast its fate with that of Neutra's Kaufmann Desert House in Palm Springs, which Christie's will offer at a blockbuster auction on May 13, with an estimate of $15-25 million. "What a great anchor this could have made to the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame," Dion mused, ever mindful of modernist buildings -- his father's and others -- that have fallen to wrecking balls, mud slides, or suspicious fires. --MARK ROZZO

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