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Wayne Manor Forever
Millionaire Bruce Wayne's mansion has been destroyed. The "fake" one, anyway.
A Pasadena, California, estate that many locals long mistook for the TV abode of Batman's alter ego was gutted in a fire Wednesday night.
The "real" Wayne Manor, as featured in the 1966-68 Batman series, and situated on the same street as the would-be Wayne Manor, was not lost, or even damaged.
Firefighters and residents only believed it was.
Blame the confusion on what Sue Mossman, executive director of the historic preservation group, Pasadena Heritage, called "a suburban legend."
The notion that the stately house at 160 South San Rafael Avenue, the one that burned, was the stately house used as the exterior for TV's Wayne Manor was easily had.
"They're almost identical," Pasadena Fire Department spokesman Lisa Derderian said of the two mansions. "It's almost scary."
The imposing hillside property at 160 South San Rafael was visible from the historic Pasadena Bridge. The real Wayne Manor, located at 380 South San Rafael, was not. While Mossman was not fooled--"I was taught that the one you can see is not the Batman house"--others were. Regularly. Routinely. And right on through the night of the fire.
"When I showed up, even the neighbors and fire personnel who grew up in the city, were saying, 'That's the Batman house,'" Derderian said.
And so initial news reports Wednesday night mourned Wayne Manor. But by Thursday morning, Derderian said, a call to the city's film office, spurred by an adamant, history-minded resident, confirmed that the TV landmark's demise had been greatly exaggerated: 380 South San Rafael was the Batman house, not 160 South San Rafael.
Wayne Manor, which also costarred in the 1991 thriller Dead Again, still stood.
But another Hollywood player didn't. The 21-room, 3.3-acre estate at 160 South San Rafael had been featured in the likes of Dynasty and Rocky V. At the time of the blaze, it was unoccupied and nearing the end of a lengthy remodel, Derderian said. Its owner, a grandson of philanthropist Armand Hammer, was expected to move into the estate in about a month.
From an architectural perspective, Mossman called the loss of the 1929 structure "incredibly sad."
And that's a sentiment that an arts patron such as Bruce Wayne likely would second.
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