It's unclear how serious members of the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission were back in 1978 when they designated Daniel Van Meter's "Tower of Wooden Pallets" a historic monument.
Commission member Bob Winter later joked that "maybe we were drunk" when they recognized the 22-foot stack of crumbling, termite-infested Schlitz beer pallets. Winter called it "the funniest thing we ever did."
Van Meter's creation became Monument No. 184, taking its place on the same registry as the Hollywood sign, Union Station and the Pantages Theatre.
In 2000, Van Meter died at age 87, and his family took over the lot on Magnolia Boulevard in Sherman Oaks. Now his heirs, who never liked the tower and were often at odds with its eccentric creator, want to clear the land of feral cats, strange plants and the tower itself so a developer can put up 98 apartments.
Van Meter's relatives stand to make millions from the sale of the 1.43-acre lot. But the tower is in their way. Knocking down a monument, even one that may be about to topple on its own, requires layers of bureaucratic process, including public hearings and detailed reports.
So for more than a year, the question of what to do about Monument No. 184 has generated a lively, at times caustic, debate about the nature of art, the character of Daniel Van Meter and the scarcity of city monuments in the San Fernando Valley, which claims just 54 of the 789 on the list.
Van Meter's exasperated relatives and the developers working with them say the pile of pallets is the furthest thing from a work of art. In language as colorful as the tower is curious, they have disparaged it as "a rotting vestige of one man's egotism" that festers "like a sore on the community's body."
What lies behind this animosity is unclear; family members refuse to discuss it. But they have suggested in letters to city agencies that Van Meter, who lived on the land for much of his life and shared ownership with his family, exploited the tower and its protected status to keep control of the lot, which one real estate agent valued at $7 million or more.
"The tower stands as a deteriorating remnant of sibling rivalry, with the monument's perpetrator being always the holdout and instigator of trouble," wrote Van Meter's nephew, James, in a letter to the Cultural Heritage Commission. "It should be destroyed, and a more pleasing structure should be allowed to replace it."
