Brief Landacre Press update

Published: October 7, 2010

We apologize for not being very prompt in posting part 2 of our story of the Paul Landacre printing press.  We have been waiting (and waiting) for official confirmation of the facts, which we thought we would have received before now.

We have heard from another party affiliated with the International Printing Museum, though, who told us that the press was actually kept out on Landacre’s porch, chained to a post, all the time. In 1963, after Landacre’s suicide attempt (he intended to asphyxiate himself with gas, but a pilot light ignited a blaze),  he was taken to the Glendale Hospital, where he would languish in the burn ward for another 2 weeks.  And, apparently, that very night someone stole the press off the porch.

Thirty years later, Ernie Linder (one of the founders of the International Printing Museum) got a phone call that there was a press for sale — the Landacre press.  So he bought it for the museum.

And that’s all we know.  For now!

Paul & Margaret Landacre's house on El Moran, photograph by Rebecca Fenning

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