The Lanterman family left behind abundance of valueless clutter stored at city’s expense
La Cañada’s historic Lanterman House provides a pristine picture of the early 20th-century existence of Roy and Emily Lanterman, who reared sons Frank and Lloyd in the custom-built 1915 family manse.
Its serene and stately rooms have been restored to convey a quiet country majesty that speaks of the city’s rural past and makes the Lanterman House museum a priceless representative of La Cañada history.
But that’s not exactly the condition the 11,250-square-foot home was in when it was bequeathed to the city after the death of Lloyd Lanterman in 1987.
“They were horrible pack rats,” said Lanterman House Executive Director Melissa Patton, who helped restore the property owned by the city and operated by the Lanterman Historical Museum Foundation. “Certainly, the two sons were hoarders.”
“As long as they could find a place to put it, they never threw anything away,” agreed docent and Lanterman board member Bob Moses.
In the years-long restoration process, larger items, such as Frank’s beloved full-sized pipe organ and Lloyd’s unused aeronautical engine parts, were removed and donated in accordance with the appropriate procedures. Other usable items were housed in the basement or in one of the many bedroom closets.
But some 20 years later, Patton admits many damaged, unusable and unwanted items are still hanging around — at the city’s expense.
Some of those items have value. Several collections of bound books kept by the Lantermans are housed in a climate-controlled records storage unit in Sun Valley at a cost of $185 per month. Patton says they’re not likely to be used but are of some value.
“And then there’s the junk,” she said. “The junk is in La Crescenta.”
In a 6-feet-by-10-feet unit hidden deep inside U.S. Storage in La Crescenta are the dregs of the Lantermans’ possessions, utterly ravaged by time, air and the remnants of bugs that drifted over years ago from a neighboring unit where a man unwisely stored food.
As bad as their condition is, the museum’s foundation is pretty much powerless to get rid of them.
“They don’t belong to the Foundation, they belong to the city. And the city says, no, you can’t throw that away,” Patton said. “They don’t want us to get rid of any of this stuff, so they pay for the storage.”
The costs, while not astronomical, add up as the decades pass. The La Crescenta unit now costs the city $211 per month.
A recent trip to the storage facility yielded a disappointing assortment of broken wood furniture, glass-fronted barrister bookcases with no top panels, an old metal filing cabinet and carpets too disintegrated to be unrolled.
Each year, the Lanterman Foundation includes the storage fees as line items in its budget, and every year the city approves the now nearly $400 monthly cost. The alternative to shoving the unwanted city-owned items under the proverbial bed, however, may be even more daunting.
“It’s an incredible hassle for the city to get rid of it,” Moses acknowledged.
City staffer Arabo Parseghian explained the city first investigates whether the school district or community groups might want the items. If not, the city can hold a public auction, giving 10 days posted notice and keeping the bidding period open for 30 days.
Third-party companies are hired to appraise and hold the auction, taking a percentage of the sales as payment. Unsold items are then offered to nonprofit organizations like Goodwill or the Salvation Army, Parseghian said.
“Most likely, if it’s gone through an auction and nobody wants it, they usually don’t want it either,” he added. “If we go through all that, it doesn’t sell and we can’t donate it, then we can legally trash it.”
The hassle comes from a desire to demonstrate responsibility with taxpayer money. Occasionally, the city inventories its unused holdings and begins the long process of paring back, but Parseghian said the Lanterman items likely fall through the cracks because they’re city-owned but not in the city’s charge.
Time will have the ultimate say, according to Patton.
“There will come a day when everything in there will fall to dust,” she said.
Twitter: @SaraCardine
