An edifice of pure function has been appended to an older one of consummate style.

The Lanterman House of La Canada Flintridge is the perfectly outlandish legacy of a man who was born to wealth, trifled his youth as a theater organist, bulled his way in his middle age into the halls of state power and, till the day he died, accepted no constraints on his personal behavior.

The home of the late Assemblyman Frank Lanterman has been described as a distinctive example of California Craftsman architecture.

The structure, squeezed onto the last remaining parcel of the Lanterman family’s onetime estate of 35 acres, is distinctive, to be sure. You hardly round the corner of Verdugo Boulevard onto Encinas Drive when its ambiguous presence is upon you, bringing to mind anything from a Catholic church to a high school gym.

Facing the street is a windowless two-story wall peaked at the center like a mission nave. The side walls are poured concrete with vertical ribs rising to a barnlike gable. Abruptly, this artless vault interlocks with the intricate projecting beams and exposed joinery of the traditional Craftsman facade.

You can deduce that an edifice of pure function has been appended to an older one of consummate style. To understand why, you must look inside.

There, at a round wicker table in the sunny breakfast room, sits Eugene Burrows, the living connection to Frank Lanterman and his brother, Lloyd. Burrows, a slow-speaking, articulate man with gray hair and a handlebar mustache, was drawn to the house to help with one of Lloyd’s frequent and fruitless ventures in mechanical engineering. He stayed on as caretaker, observing close hand for years the two bachelor heirs of La Canada’s pioneer family.

Lloyd he described as a milquetoast who did whatever Frank told him to do. And Frank did whatever he wanted. Whether it was berating Gov. Ronald Reagan on the phone or elevating a chance encounter with a disabled child into California’s seminal legislation on the disabled, he exercised power with absolute focus and fearlessness of reproach.

A hint of the brothers’ self-absorption survives in a 1929 letter to Lloyd from Frank, then a professional organist in Australia:

“We have both been badly spoiled with comforts and luxuries. . . . You have (apparently) no means to support anyone, and I’m too busy earning my own roll to have any time to spare for a girl. So just point out a girl who would consciously leave a happy home for what either of us have to offer?”

Frank aimed for the Legislature in 1951 to bring Colorado River water to unincorporated Flintridge, which he did, enabling subdivision of the family estate.

In 1963, what captured his fancy was the Wurlitzer organ of the San Francisco Fox Theater. The theater was closing and the organ was to be turned out to salvage.

He bought it for $15,000. He then built a container for it on the side of the family home. It has been called a recital hall. That’s overglamorous. On the inside, it resembles nothing so much as an aircraft hangar. The far end is darkened by black louvers that open and close to adjust the volume of the 36 ranks of pipes behind. The roof encloses two wings, whose eaves have been sawed away. Seven rooms are filled with blowers, ducts and electric panels.

Burrows says Frank Lanterman built the hall for only one purpose: to play his Wurlitzer for himself, in his bathrobe if he chose.

Frank Lanterman died in 1981. Lloyd followed in 1987. He willed the house to the city of La Canada Flintridge to be made into a museum. Perhaps in deference to its old crony, the Legislature voted $500,000 for the restoration.

Since then, the house has brought the small city a lot of stress. Some residents--especially those of the expensive homes on Encinas Drive--would rather see the house demolished and replaced by something more like theirs.

They filed suit and rattled the City Council but, in the end, were rebuffed. A private foundation has been incorporated to guide development of a museum program and raise what money is needed.

Its 15-member board meets tonight in the Lanterman House to begin hammering out what may prove the most difficult item of the Lanterman legacy: what to do with the Wurlitzer?

Those who didn’t want the house at all would be appeased if the organ departed. They have potential allies among musical and architectural purists who think that the instrument is only suited to a larger space and that the integrity of the house would best be served by dismantling its odd appendage.

Should it be decided to eliminate the organ, there is a probable taker down the street in Glendale, where a historical group is making plans to restore performing arts to the Alex Theatre.

In its convoluted way, history supports that switch, for the young Frank Lanterman played organ that in the Alex at many a Hollywood preview.

On the other hand, Burrows, die-hard La Canada Flintridge historians and not a few self-absorbed organists want the instrument to stay right where one could, at least in the imagination, play it in a bathrobe.

Without it, what would Frank Lanterman’s outlandish home be but a nice old house?