Will Rogers’ ranch house. Pasadena Waldorf School. Robert Bridges House. The Rabbit Museum. Andrew McNally House. Theater palisades. Zane Grey’s estate.

The Palisades and Eaton infernos devastated more than 30 historic structures, which preservationists say is the worst loss of such buildings in the region’s history.

“It’s shocking and heartbreaking — I can’t put it any other way,” said Ken Bernstein, senior urban planner with Los Angeles City Planning’s Office of Historic Resources. “This is widespread destruction of significant architecture and places valued in our communities.”

The number could potentially rise dramatically if loss accounting continues. Although institutions like the Getty Villa were saved, the fate of many other notables—such as several influential mid-century case study houses built with the support of Arts & Architecture magazine—remains unknown.

The Los Angeles Conservancy said Friday afternoon that 32 properties it classified as historic because of their architectural or cultural significance were wiped out by the fires, which have destroyed or damaged more than 9,000 structures.

Some of the historic buildings, including Altadena’s Zane Gray Estate and Rogers’ Western-style Palisades home, officially had landmark status on the National Register of Historic Places or another list. But others, like Fox’s Restaurant in Altadena and Theater Palisades, were deemed important in part because of their status as popular community spaces.

“It’s a mass erasure of heritage,” said Adrian Scott Fine, executive director of the Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to historic preservation. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

In some cases, notable properties are severely damaged but not destroyed, including Gladstones, the oceanfront seafood restaurant formerly owned by the late L.A. mayor Richard Riordan, according to the Santa Monica Mirror. In the foothills of Altadena, much of the Zorthian Ranch burned to the ground, including works of art by founder Jirayr Zorthian. But two buildings at the artists’ colony were spared, said Jason Deach, a ranch hand who visited the site Thursday.

“Everything else is gone, wiped off the map,” he said.

Some institutions have already promised to rebuild — including the Rabbit Museum in Altadena, which contained quirky but seemingly irreplaceable collections of porcelain figurines, artwork, clothing and other items depicting rabbits. The Lake Avenue Museum lost around 46,000 objects.

“We are losing these touchstones — physical places in the world that shape our intellectual history,” said Richard Schave, a conservation advocate and co-founder of Esotouric, a cultural travel service.

As natural disasters become more severe due to climate change, conservationists face a new and ominous challenge. The losses from this week’s fires have highlighted a fundamental change in this area.

“The major threat to historic preservation in the 20th century was symbolized by the bulldozer destroying individual historic buildings or communities for urban renewal,” Bernstein said. “Today is the extreme climate event. Wildfires, sea level rise and extreme winds do not represent an increasing threat, but rather a constant threat of widespread destruction of our most treasured historical and architectural landmarks.”

Eaton fire destroys “esoteric knowledge”

Some of Altadena’s notable properties, including the Zorthian Ranch and the Bunny Museum, tell the story of the community’s long-standing role as a haven for free spirits, mystics and counterculture figures.

Their destruction, Schave said, amounts to an erasure of regional history, which is linked to the “lowering of social consciousness in order to bring about positive changes.” He and his wife Kim Cooper, the other founder of Esotouric Tours, were particularly upset about the loss of the Theosophical Library Center.

The Lake Avenue facility housed the largest collection of materials related to Theosophy, a modern religious movement that counted writers such as William Butler Yeats among its followers and had an influence on later New Age belief systems. “It was a collection of esoteric knowledge,” Cooper said.

The library contained over 40,000 titles and the archives of the Theosophical Society. The collection, Cooper said, reflects “the cultural ideas that have shaped this visionary spirituality of Southern California.” The Theosophical Society did not respond to interview requests.

Other notable losses in Altadena include homes. The Andrew McNally House was built by the eponymous map maker and publishing co-founder Rand McNally. Built in 1887, the privately owned Queen Anne-style mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The house was known for its so-called Turkish Room, an ornate octagon that Cooper said was “one of the most beautiful rooms in the world.”

Not far from the McNally estate, the Zane Gray Estate lies in ruins. Co-designed by famed architect Myron Hunt and built in 1907, the house was long the home of its eponymous owner. Gray was the author of Riders of the Purple Sage and many other works of Western fiction.

“Gray was very important as a literary figure and (the house) was architecturally significant,” Fine said. He added bleakly that the restoration of the property was “almost complete.”

Historic coastal devastation

Like Altadena, the Palisades lost a mix of historic, privately owned properties and famous public spaces, perhaps none more popular than Rogers’ ranch house.

The 31-room residence was built by the vaudeville and movie star in the 1920s and was located in Will Rogers State Historic Park. The house served as a museum and houses a collection of fine art, Western memorabilia, and a Rogers-themed library.

The California State Parks system, which oversees the property, said it saved certain items, including art.

“They saved some of the interior and some of the collection, but not much,” Fine said. “This is an epic loss. You can’t talk about the Palisades without talking about Will Rogers.”

Bernstein mourned the fate of the Palisades’ Business Block, a Spanish Colonial-style shopping center built in 1924. Television broadcasts showed the property on Sunset Boulevard was almost completely leveled, although some architectural features remained intact.

He called the trapezoidal building, listed as an LA Historic-Cultural Monument, “the earliest commercial heart of Pacific Palisades.”

A representative for the development did not respond to a request for comment.

Bernstein and others said it will take time to catalog all of the historic structures destroyed. He said his office will eventually update a citywide overview of historic places — searchable online through the HistoricPlacesLA database — to reflect the losses.

The information, he said, will help preservationists, property owners and others understand “what we have lost and what we may still be able to do to revitalize and restore.”

There’s a long-standing saying about Southern California: It’s a region too willing to destroy its history in the name of progress. Today, observers may question the veracity of that maxim—conservationists have made great strides in recent decades—but this week a devastating new truth emerged amid the ashes.

A firestorm did what no bulldozer could do.