A Documentary on the Demo of a Modernist Masterpiece Hits Home for L.A.’s Maslon Group
by David Hay
March 2026
At last month’s Modernism Week, the annual celebration of midcentury and modern architecture, art, interior design, landscape design, and vintage culture in Palm Springs, Calif., the screening of a new documentary from the organization Preservation Mirage offered a stark reminder of what happens when architectural landmarks are not protected.
Richard Neutra’s Maslon House recounts the hasty destruction in 2002 of a modernist masterpiece in Rancho Mirage. Produced and directed by Scott Goldstein and Dave Yakir, the film was a call to arms that was greeted by thunderous applause. In attendance, perhaps clapping louder than most, were two Douglas Elliman agents with an especially personal investment in the subject: the Brentwood-based mother-daughter duo of Marny Maslon and Zoe Kasiske.
Maslon is the granddaughter of Samuel and Luella Maslon, significant art collectors who commissioned Neutra to build them a home on the 12th fairway of the Tamarisk Country Club in the early 1960s.
“I was there often,” Maslon told me. “It was such a wonderful place to be, and they just loved the house.”
The Neutra scholar Barbara Lamprecht wrote that “its clean forms recall the manicured perfection of the golf course, the house’s roof line runs parallel to the infinite green plane behind it, and the exterior’s white color echoes the white sand traps found throughout the course.”
Although it was one of only three homes in the Coachella Valley designed by the renowned architect, the home was abruptly razed early on a Saturday morning in March 2002, shortly after it had been purchased for $2.45 million.
Eulogizing the house in The New York Times Magazine, design writer Brad Dunning (who is featured in the film) wrote that the Rancho Mirage City Hall granted a contractor’s application for a demolition permit “that same day with no review and no questions, stamped and approved. Service with a smile. The house was gone within a week.”
The demolition sparked national outrage and resulted in the creation of a strict preservation ordinance in Rancho Mirage, which also quickly instituted a census of all the houses within its city limits to ensure such an event would not take place again.
Goldstein, who is also Vice President of Preservation Mirage, has been thrilled by the reception for the film, which has been accepted to a number of film festivals in pursuit of a wide release.
“Everybody harbors anxiety about losing a house,” he said. “That this was one of such architectural significance only heightens that anxiety. People naturally think if it could happen to a famous house then it could happen to mine.”
Maslon and Kasiske certainly hope Richard Neutra’s Maslon House will be a wake-up call for the ongoing need to preserve architectural history. Indeed, their familial connection to that legacy is ever-present in their work as agents in a market so inextricably linked to mid-century modernism.
“We’re always looking for those houses,” Maslon said. “It’s in our blood.”
David Hay is a well-known architectural writer and playwright. His stories have been featured in The New York Times, Dwell and New York.
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