The New York Times visits Angeleno Heights and finds Murray
Burns peering out his front window:
It was a sunny March morning, and a white rental sedan
was parked in front of Murray Burns’s Victorian home on Carrol Avenue in Los
Angeles. From the car’s front seat, two German women snapped photos of the
ornately ornamented 1887 house, a Los Angeles landmark famous both as a
pristinely restored example of this period architecture and also as the set
for the television show “Charmed.”Mr. Burns, wearing a pink Nehru shirt and Birkenstocks,
watched the gawkers from his front lawn and sighed. “This is what we live
with, every day,” he said, and, shrugging, shuffled toward the car. The women
watched him approach with trepidation, prepared for a scolding. Instead, Mr.
Burns flapped a hand at them with equal parts impatience and benevolence:
“Would you like to come in?” he asked.The Germans ooh-ed and aah-ed as they peered around Mr.
Burns’s museum-perfect house, which is just one of 12 restored Victorians that
Mr. Burns and his wife own — mostly as income-producing rental properties —
and constantly end up showing to strangers. “We may own these homes, but we
think they belong to the people of Los Angeles,” Mr. Burns explained, as the
tourists snapped photos on his staircase. “There’s an obligation to let people
like these experience it too.”
