Chris Pratt catches heat for bulldozing historic 1950s house to build his mansion

Chris Pratt has received criticism for destroying a historic mid-century property in order to build his new home.

Pratt, along with his wife Katherine Schwarzenegger, purchased the 1950 Zimmerman house last year. The Los Angeles home was designed by Craig Ellwood, and the couple reportedly bought it for $12.5million.

It is situated in the Brentwood neigbourhood of LA, and was mainly lived in by the late Hilda Rolfe, the widow of The Man From U.N.C.L.E co-creator Sam Rolfe.

The home and its grounds have now been cleared to make way for Pratt’s new single-story modern farmhouse, which is set to be 15,000 square feet in size. It is set to feature a secondary unit, a pool and a three-car garage.

Pratt’s new home has been designed by architect Ken Ungar, who typically specialises in high-end modern farmhouse-style properties, according to Architectural Digest (via The Guardian).

The Eichler Network, which provides news and updates about mid-century Californian homes, disapproved of the project. The writer Adriene Biondo said: “At the same time as architectural homes are being marketed as high-end, collectible art, others are being torn down to build new.”

Biondo continued: “Perhaps a historic-cultural monument designation could have saved the Zimmerman house, or allowed the necessary time to delay demolition. Tragically, calls for preservation fell on deaf ears.”

The Los Angeles Conservancy, which is dedicated to preserving historic buildings, had warned of the demolition earlier this year, adding that the residence was “highly intact and a noteworthy example of modernist design from this era”.

Pratt, 44, and Schwarzenegger, 34, have been in a relationship since June 2018, and they married in Montecito, California in 2019. They couple share two daughters.