The Old and the Odd From Attics, Yards Supply Museum

There is a stove that once belonged to Gen. George S. Patton. A collection of walking sticks from all over the world. And a dugout canoe used by the American Indians who once lived in Duarte’s Fish Canyon.

Hundreds of other items displayed in the newly opened Monrovia Historical Museum range from the unexpected to the everyday.

The mementos, photos and books have been rescued from back yards and attics and even a dusty high school basement. Some were stored as treasures in family trunks. Others were taken off the junk heap.

The collection, which has been four years in the making, went on public view last month when the museum, at 742 E. Lemon Ave., began opening its doors from 1 to 5 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and the third Sunday of each month.

The museum was curated more by spontaneous offering than organized historical purpose. It started as an outgrowth of the city’s 100th-anniversary celebration in 1986 when the Centennial Committee began to receive queries from people who wanted to contribute.

“People started saying that they had ‘things’ and they wanted to know what to do with them,” recalled Joan Bonholtzer, president of the museum foundation. Those “things,” it turned out, were historical documents, pictures, record books, artwork and furniture.

At various times in the past, city boosters have considered creating a permanent memorial to town founder William Monroe. But proposals for a walkway, fountain or a bust were never carried out.

The artifacts suddenly coming forward seemed to provide the perfect vehicle for that old wish. So the committee voted to find a home for the donated items. In 1988, the museum foundation was formed.

Over the last five years, the foundation has received donations of money, services or historical items from several thousand people--in and out of Monrovia. Descendants of the town founder contributed a portrait of William and Mary Monroe on their wedding day as well as family histories, news clippings, journals and photos that tell the story of Monrovia’s early days.

On one wall, there are photographs of all the presidents of the Monrovia Woman’s Club, a politically potent group that once included all the important women of the city.

In another display are two chairs and a table used in services in the early days of Monrovia’s oldest religious institution, Shiloh African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, founded in 1886 by a minister who led his small flock of freed slaves to Monrovia from South Carolina.

In another display, a turn-of-the-century citrus kitchen, for processing fruit, features Patton’s stove. Originally used in Patton’s San Marino house, it was donated by the general’s niece, who lived in Monrovia.

The museum’s west wing houses rotating historical displays of broader interest. Currently there is an exhibit of costumes and presidential dolls.

The museum also has an eclectic collection of items gathered from all over the world by a Monrovia dentist, Edwin Salisbury, during the 1920s and ‘30s. Salisbury mounted and catalogued the hundreds of curious items he collected, ranging from tools to snakeskins to fossils, pipes and walking sticks.

He donated the collection to Monrovia High School during the 1940s for teachers to use in the classrooms. Over the years, however, the collection was relegated to the school basement, where it was mostly forgotten, said Kristin Mariconda, the museum’s finance officer.

“The meticulous records he kept of all the things he collected are marvelous,” Mariconda said.

When the museum foundation heard about the Salisbury collection, she said, members asked for permission to examine it. In the course of their search in the school basement, they also discovered the Indian canoe which, like the Salisbury collection, is on permanent loan from the school to the museum.

Along with being a home for Monrovia memorabilia, the museum is itself a historical site. Built between 1923 and 1925, the Recreation Park facility once housed the Monrovia Municipal Plunge.

Back in the early days, the city pool augmented the fast-disappearing orange grove irrigation reservoirs that were used as swimming holes. It served as a city landmark for more than 50 years but was closed in 1983 when its operation it became too costly for the city and the Monrovia High School pool was rebuilt and opened for public use.

When the pool was closed, plans were made to demolish the 8,000-square-foot Spanish Colonial Revival-style plunge building that housed the men’s and women’s dressing rooms and pool offices. But preservationists persuaded the city to save the building and renovated it for the museum. The city leased the building to the foundation for 50 years at $1 a year.

Pool “keys,” replicas of those once used to open the lockboxes handed out to swimmers for their valuables, are on sale as mementos at the museum gift shop. The actual metal lockboxes have been preserved in the basement, where volunteer curators are sorting through and boxing all the historical mementos.

Volunteers have played a central role in the museum, including raising more than $400,000 in donations, mostly from individuals. They started with a state grant of $50,000. “We will open with no debt,” Bonholtzer said.

And the foundation hopes that the museum can stay that way for good. The idea, Bonholtzer explained, is to have the museum property pay for itself by being leasing out for club meetings, installations, wedding receptions and public events. That way, there will be no need for future fund-raising to pay for the ongoing costs of the collection.

With that idea in mind, the museum was provided with a meeting room, a kitchen, landscaped gardens and a courtyard with a fountain that would be suitable for an outdoor wedding or reception.

“This is something that is not going to go away,” Bonholtzer said. “It’s something that will be here for future generations.”

A formal opening ceremony for the museum is planned for the fall, he said.