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Six months after the Eaton Fire reduced the world’s largest bunny collection to ash, The Bunny Museum has received more than 22,000 replacement items from donors around the globe.
Co-founder Candace Frazee reports an outpouring of support from around the world.
The Bunny Museum at 2605 Lake Avenue was among the last buildings in Altadena to burn when the Eaton Fire swept through the town on January 7 and 8.
Frazee said the museum and its contents burned to the ground after she and co-founder Steve Lubanski spent the night trying to protect it, only to see winds shift and flames rush in.
“We stayed up all night with a garden hose saving the museum and the apartment building to the north of the museum,” Frazee recalls.
Frazee and co-founder Steve Lubanski lost more than 60,000 bunny-themed artifacts in the fire — including catalogued figurines, jewelry, toys, books, paintings and personal items such as wedding albums and Frazee’s wedding dress.
The museum originally held the Guinness World Record for the largest bunny collection, with over 46,000 items documented.
The devastation has been met with an outpouring of support, Frazee said, from around the world.
Since the January fire, more than thousands upon thousands of donated bunny items have arrived from individuals worldwide — many of them exact matches to pieces that once belonged to the original museum.
“What is most heartwarming is seeing items that were in the museum. Like seeing old friends again,” Frazee said. “So, we will have most of the collection back from the generosity of strangers.”
The Bunny Museum was founded in 1998 in the couple’s Pasadena home after years of the couple exchanging rabbit-themed gifts. It moved to its dedicated Altadena location in 2017, becoming both a local oddity and an internationally known record holder. Following the fire, the museum launched a GoFundMe campaign on Jan. 10, which has raised over $80,000.
Though debris was cleared on June 24, reconstruction has not begun. Contrary to early reports of a 2026 groundbreaking, Frazee said there is no firm start date. The museum aims to reopen by 2028, marking its 30th anniversary.
The new facility will include a fire-resistant steel structure with a vegetation buffer, enhanced digital cataloging, and a permanent Eaton Fire memorial gallery.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers salvaged more than 1,000 damaged artifacts for the exhibit, many of them blackened, melted or missing limbs.
Frazee said visitors will experience a deeper connection to the collection than ever before.
“Visitors often would say, ‘I have that bunny!’ Soon visitors will say, ‘I donated that bunny!’ It will not just be a museum for the community, but truly the community’s museum,” she said.
The museum’s character, Frazee added, will remain rooted in its origins.
“The Bunny Museum will always be joyous because it is about love. It started on Valentine’s Day, after all.”
While donations have supported the museum’s recovery, Frazee noted that she and Lubanski are not permitted to benefit personally from those contributions, despite having lost their own belongings.
“However, as the co-founders, we are not allowed to profit from the museum donations, yet we lost all our personal belongings, too,” Frazee said. “So, we do cherish when someone thinks to send us a personal check or restaurant gift card.”
Plans for the museum also include rotating community galleries, wildfire safety education, and historical preservation—building on past efforts such as a COVID exhibit developed after the pandemic shutdown.
For updates and donations, visit: https://www.gofundme.com/f/rebuild-the-bunny-museum-help-steve-candace.
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