The Bunny Museum, destroyed by Eaton fire, vows to return

Among the losses successful the devastating Eaton occurrence was The Bunny Museum, husband-and-wife Steve Lubanski and Candace Frazee’s expansive ode to the world’s hoppiest animal, the rabbit. The Altadena museum, located connected Lake Avenue, was 1 of Southern California’s quintessentially quirky institutions, a spot that transported guests to a unusual and magical satellite wherever the bunny permeates each aspects of life.

There were stuffed bunnies (including the archetypal bunny that Lubanski talented Frazee, the 1 that helium gave her due to the fact that they utilized to telephone each different “bunny” arsenic an endearment), hundreds of miniature porcelain bunnies, a bunny T-shirt collection, bunny cooky jars, bunny movie posters (including “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” and “Peter Rabbit”), a bunny opus country (Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” for one), bunny costumes, bunny books, bunny items from Rose Parade floats, and connected and on.

The mates ended up collecting much than 46,000 bunny objects and memorabilia successful each — a certified Guinness World Record for largest bunny postulation successful the world.

The Bunny Museum, photographed earlier the fire, had the world’s largest bunny collection.

(Maxwell Williams / Los Angeles Times)

Most of it burned successful the occurrence connected Wednesday. “We mislaid our wedding albums, my wedding dress, and 46,000 bunny objects,” Frazee wrote successful an email from a motel, arsenic her telephone was besides mislaid successful the fire.

It was a life’s work, and Lubanski stood extracurricular the gathering hosing it down until the gathering adjacent doorway caught fire. It was past that the mates grabbed a fewer prime bunny items, their existent bunnies, Doris and Nicky, and their cats, and left.

“We saved the archetypal bunny and the 2nd bunny of the collection,” Frazee said. “Gifts to each other. We saved the antiquity items, 3 framed Guinness World Record certificates and the Elvis Parsley h2o pitcher.”

But, she added: “It’s not a hoppy day.”

On Thursday, Frazee vowed to fans connected societal media that the depository would rebuild, hopefully successful the aforesaid space. She said the depository has yet to acceptable up a GoFundMe page, though they program to, and that immoderate existent fundraising efforts floating astir are not sanctioned by the museum.

The depository began arsenic a humble endeavor successful 1998. Frazee and Lubanski had been collecting bunnies since that archetypal one, and they had capable successful their arsenal to unfastened the archetypal location, successful their Pasadena home, to the nationalist by appointment. It was an oddity backmost then, but radical came. They told their friends astir this unusual postulation of bunny items, and the postulation grew, and finally, successful 2017, the depository expanded to Altadena, to the 7,000-square ft mid-century gathering that they proceeded to worldly to the brim with bunnies.

As Frazee utilized to archer astir everyone that entered, it was the “hoppiest spot connected Earth.”