America's legacy by Bill Kay

Take a house that no one wants but no one wants to see demolished, add an accomplished 1920s band (yes, it's that Ian Whitcomb again), a clutch of people who love dressing up and the best collection of cakes in California and what do you have? You have the Ragtime Tea Party at Lanterman House in La Canada Flintridge, that's what.
Lynne and I tried the dancing, but it wasn't for us. No reflection on the lovely Regina, whose tuition would turn the clumsiest elephant into the most dazzling ballerina, but Lynne got an attack of the giggles and that was that. I wasn't sad. The tea and a tour of the house eventually yielded an insight into the twilight world of the sub-tourist attraction that arc-lighted a growing problem for America's heritage.
That heritage is becoming a thriving industry as the country becomes more conscious of its history and the passing years contribute more and more buildings and artefacts that may - or may not - be worth preserving. It is also creating a class of institutions, mainly universities, that acquire as legacies more of this memorabilia than they know what to do with.
Lanterman House is such a case. It was built in 1915 by the Lanterman family, who made it earthquake-proof with concrete walls a foot thick and filled it with contemporary furniture and kitchen equipment that has luckily survived, mainly because the house ended up in the hands of two brothers who never married but used the remarkable upper-floor ballroom to store what they weren't using. No brides ever arrived to throw out the junk or to paint over the hand-painted friezes.
So the house has been preserved in aspic. As one of the brothers was an alumnus of the University of Southern California he proudly left it to his old uni. Trouble is, his old uni has enough similar houses in the LA area to form a small town - much like Heritage Square down the nearby Pasadena Freeway. USC's pride and joy is Pasadena's Gamble House, a prime example of craftsman architecture preserved to the nth degree. Lanterman, while excellent, doesn't quite match up. So USC was going to demolish it but at the last minute the surviving brother traded some other property to keep the house in the family. He duly died and it became the responsibility of the local authority, which contributes $500,000 a year to restore it, with the help of an enthusiastic non-profit preservation society, the Lanterman House Foundation.
But they have an uphill task, because it is way off the main tourist routes and the council has imposed strict conditions which prevent the Foundation from maximising even the limited revenue they could land hands on, as they are not allowed to tout for commercial business such as weddings, birthday parties, or corporate brainstorming weekends.
Every so often, though, the Foundation is allowed to run events like the Ragtime Tea Dance, when people can pay $45 a head to pretend they are back in the 1920s and refresh themselves with a very impressive tea - which, starting at 1.45 pm, doubled as a late lunch for quite a few of the guests.
The occasion presented a side of America that most foreigners would not guess exists. TV and cinema give the impression that the country is unrelentingly modern, with nods to the Civil and Revolutionary Wars for the benefit of tourists. But there is a small but growing demand for dressing up and turning the clock back, and America has the opportunity and the settings in which to indulge that whim.