Mysterious Mansion Merely Facade : Estate: Many details about the home and life of Helen Morgenthaler remain hidden. But the structure clearly was a mix of the wildly eccentric and the surprisingly ordinary.

"The mysterious structure has now been unmasked, its Mediterranean-style, pastel-stucco front discovered to be an exaggerated facade masking a crumbling, two-story stucco and wood-frame house with a leaky tar-paper roof and a shaky river-rock foundation. A small wood-frame structure, not much bigger than a shack, is melded onto the rear of the house."

"A local real estate agent, Houg was doing what many people in this small town confess they have always wanted to do: He was taking a peek around the estate of Helen Morgenthaler, a reclusive eccentric whose father made a comfortable living in the wall-covering business."

"On his recent tour, Houg turned the flashlight on an intricately carved wooden fireplace mantel. 'This is the only thing that has value . . . and it's downhill from there,' he said."

Helen Morgenthaler's San Marino estate, long a source of curiosity and speculation among locals, has been revealed to be far less impressive than its ornate Mediterranean-style facade suggested. The property, which Morgenthaler inherited from her father who worked in the wall-covering business, actually contains a crumbling two-story structure with a leaky tar-paper roof, unstable river-rock foundation, and a small wood-frame addition. County officials began clearing overgrown vegetation from the nearly two-acre site due to property maintenance violations. Following Morgenthaler's death at age 88, the county's Public Guardian agency, which had managed her affairs, listed the 3,000-square-foot house for sale. Real estate agents handling the property discovered that aside from an intricately carved wooden fireplace mantel, the home held minimal value.

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