On January 7, 2025, a devastating fire tore through the community of Altadena, CA — destroying thousands of homes, altering countless lives, and forever changing the landscape of this once-idyllic enclave. Photographer Janet Grey, creator of @housesofhollywood, an Instagram account devoted to capturing the individuality of LA's residential architectural treasures, felt called to document what remained after the flames, with a focus on the chimneys.
When all else had been reduced to rubble, the chimneys stood strong — like tombstones at the end of one life, waiting for another to begin — bearing witness to the love and laughter once held within the walls of each lost home. Janet documented these architectural remnants as an act of preservation, a way of bridging the past with the future and ensuring that the stories and memories those homes had held would endure, even after those seemingly triumphant chimneys were also wiped away, reduced to dust like the ruins around them.
Janet hopes that these images of chimneys will evoke the warm and wonderful experiences shared in the homes they once belonged to. As she says, “All of it was important. All of it mattered. All of it deserves to be remembered.”