At first glance, the museum located in George Izay Park seems to be solely the Menzter House, which is visible from the street. But after passing through that 1887 building you will find the Gordon R. Howard Museum, which measures some 20,000 square feet and is named after the Burbank Historical Society’s original benefactor.
Mary Jane Strickland began the Burbank Historical Society in 1973, after determining that city records and the library’s collection were not enough to encompass the city’s rich history.
Spread across the museum’s two floors are photographs, maps, souvenirs, and mementos of churches, schools, hotels, businesses, factories, and emergency services, as well as displays about local celebrities, famous restaurants, the NBC television station, and even one of Tonight Show host Johnny Carson’s striped jackets. The main heavy industries of Burbank—Lockheed Aviation, Warner Bros, Columbia, and Walt Disney Studios, the latter of which covered 51 acres when it first opened in 1939—also have large exhibits.
There is a selection of vintage vehicles, including the custom-made 1982 “Bap Mobile,” a 1949 fire engine, a 1923 Moreland Bus that featured in the 2011 Oscar-winning movie The Artist, and a bright red Model T Ford Speedster in Kong’s Speed Shop, and a whole 1920s ranch house is recreated here as well, while “The Salon” displays vintage dresses, hats and handbags. There are representations of what a store, office, parlor, bedroom, dentist, doctor, etc. would have looked like here in decades past.
Upstairs there is an extensive historical doll collection, which was one of the first donations, and other local curiosities include the box office of the old Magnolia movie theater, and countless examples of furniture, toys, tools, street signs, guns, posters, vintage cameras, musical instruments, and exhibits about local people who served in World War I and World War II.
The Mentzer House, which was ordered from a Sears & Roebuck catalog and then assembled, was one of six confirmed properties built by the Providencia Land, Water & Development Co, who bought over 9,000 acres of land from dentist David Burbank in 1887.
Burbank had bought two ranchos previously, establishing a sheep farm but after the sale, the land was divided into vineyards and fruit and vegetable farms. The settlement was named after him in 1887, and the 500 inhabitants voted to become a city in 1911.
