Diane Keaton’s quiet activism helped preserve these Los Angeles landmarks

the people magazine reported She died on Saturday at the age of 79.

Keaton has served on the board of directors of the Los Angeles Conservancy and as a trustee of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Its activities included rescue efforts Aeneas’ housean iconic 1920s residence in the Hollywood Hills, designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

The Northridge earthquake in 1994 and torrential rains a decade later caused extensive damage. The National Foundation for Historic Preservation placed the house on its 2005 list of the 11 most endangered historic places in America.

It was partially restored by the non-profit Ennis House Foundation, then purchased and fully restored in 2011. Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservation FoundationKeaton called on the Hollywood community to help save the house, which has appeared in several films, and eventually joined the board of directors of the Ennis House Foundation.

Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Oakes Archives/Getty Images

Keaton also fought to preserve the Century Plaza Hotel, which was built in the 1960s and was also placed on the 11 Most Endangered Historic Places list in 2009.

The owners at the time proposed demolishing the hotel and replacing it with a mixed-use project, which Keaton said “It is part of an uninspired attack on the large-scale architecture of 1960s Los Angeles“.

But the city approved a project that kept the hotel as the centerpiece of the project. Rehabilitation work began in 2016, and the hotel was reopened in 2021, according to the statement Los Angeles Reserve.

However, efforts to save the 1920s-era Ambassador Hotel were not successful. An early symbol of the city’s development and the site of Robert Kennedy’s assassination, the hotel was demolished in 2005 to make way for a school.

In 2008, Keaton wrote Editorial in Los Angeles Times She reflects on the iconic hotel, her childhood memories there, and the lessons of conservation for the city more broadly.

“I will never understand why architecture is a second cousin to painting and cinema,” she said. “We have never married our romance to architecture. A building, unlike a canvas or a DVD, is a monumental work of art that has many diverse uses. We watch movies in buildings. We look at paintings on their walls. We pray in cathedrals. We live inside places we call homes. A home gives us faith in the belief in a good life. When we demolish a building, we erase Lessons for the future. If we think about it this way, we begin to understand the emotional impact of wasting the energy and resources used to build it in the first place.