The Bunny Museum shared new renderings on October 25 of the building it hopes to construct on the northwest corner of Lake Avenue and N. Altadena Drive, the same Altadena corner where its collection burned to the ground in the Eaton fire in January 2025. Co-founders Candace Frazee and Steve Lubanski vowed to rebuild within days of that fire, and the fresh images offer the clearest look yet at what visitors might eventually walk into.
As NBC Los Angeles reports, the future museum is designed by architect James R. Meyer of El Segundo and will sit on the site of the first Altadena museum, which itself was a successor to the original Bunny Museum that Frazee and Lubanski founded inside a private Pasadena home in the 1990s. The pair's rabbit-themed collection grew so large that the museum moved into its own Pasadena building before relocating to Altadena nearly a decade before this year, according to the same outlet. That earlier structure, destroyed in the fire, is described elsewhere as a modern, two-story building that will include underground parking, an exhibition hall and a sculpture garden, per Pasadena Star-News.
Construction on the rebuilt museum is slated to begin in 2027, the Star-News has reported, though the museum has not announced an official construction launch date or a prospective opening date. In the meantime, the lot has become something of a showcase for Altadena's broader rebuilding efforts. A crane hoisted a Team AB Builds accessory dwelling unit onto the property on June 30, and the structure is the only state-approved single-family modular model home in Altadena, the newspaper's report noted. The model ADU is scheduled to have a grand opening on October 31 and will remain on site at 2605 Lake Avenue until construction on the museum itself begins.
A Steel Sentinel Watches Over the Lot
Standing guard over the property is Scanner, a 14-foot-tall, 1,100-pound stainless-steel sculpture that arrived a little over a year after the Eaton fire, according to the same Pasadena outlet. The statue was designed by Chinese artist Jesse Zhao, and Wesley Zucco of Monrovia donated the $14,100 cost of the piece. The model home and the sculpture together have also been used to demonstrate how modular construction might offer a streamlined path for other Eaton fire rebuilds, ADUs, multifamily housing and commercial projects, the report added.
Donors from around the world have helped replenish what the fire took. More than 35,000 bunnies had been donated to the museum in the aftermath, according to the Pasadena Weekly, with the donated items stored in three storage containers in the site's driveway. Frazee said her new collection now contains about 50,000 bunny items and is still growing, per NBC Los Angeles, while the rebuilding process has already moved through debris removal by the Army Corps, soil testing and the hiring of Meyer as architect, the Weekly reported.
What the Future Museum Could Hold
The future Bunny Museum will contain thousands of rabbit-themed items, and the couple's rebuilding plans call for a new Eaton Fire exhibit that would display burned bunnies alongside letters, notes and cards sent in after the fire, according to the Pasadena Weekly. Before the blaze, the collection topped 60,000 pieces; donated items and roughly 20 pieces salvaged from the flames had brought the total to about 40,000 by February, the Star-News reported. A separate Guinness World Records account placed the collection at 40,550 items as of Jan. 22, valued at $1.7 million, and noted the museum held the Guinness World Record designation for the largest collection of rabbit-related items in 2023.
The rebuilt museum is also expected to be larger than its predecessor, with more parking, an elevator and a cafe, per the Pasadena Weekly's account of the couple's plans. For now, the museum is encouraging bunny enthusiasts to follow its social media for updates as the project moves from renderings toward groundbreaking.
