By Jane Knoerle
Almanac Lifestyles Editor
“I tell my friends I have very good taste in houses,” says Susanne Pandich, Filoli’s executive director. Before coming to Filoli last year, she was curator of the Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina, and most recently, director of Lyndhurst, a National Trust property in Tarrytown, New York.
An easterner by birth, Ms. Pandich spent 12 years at the Biltmore Estate and 18 years at Lyndhurst.
“It took a house like Filoli to get me to move, but our daughter had just graduated from Cornell and the timing seemed right,” says Ms. Pandich, who now lives in Foster City with her husband, Richard, a teacher.
Ms. Pandich’s love of great houses began when she was a child, when her German parents took her to Europe every summer. She graduated from Wheaton College with a degree in art and architecture and earned a graduate degree in historic preservation from Columbia University.
She became the first curator of the Biltmore Estate right out of grad school. As the director of Lyndhurst, she was responsible for multi-million-dollar capital improvement campaigns.
Invitations to Filoli’s anniversary dinner-dance, “Cabaret at Filoli,” to be held March 25 in the mansion’s ballroom, were stacked on Ms. Pandich’s desk when we visited recently.
She handed us an invitation that said, “The 30s was the decade that both owners of Filoli, the Roths and the Bourns, entertained in style at Filoli.”
The dinner is patterned after one the Bourns gave to celebrate the end of prohibition in 1933. It was called a “drunks’ dinner.” However, the invitation said, “Mr. and Mrs. Bourn, being of sober mind, will not attend.” Both were in poor health at that time.
“The 1930s were a time of parties in this house,” says Ms. Pandich. “The Roth twins made their debut here in 1938.”
Today, those twins — Lurline Coonan and Berenice Spalding, daughters of Filoli’s owners Lurline and William P. Roth — both live in the Bay Area and serve on Filoli’s advisory board.
The advisory board meets twice a year and includes many of Filoli’s longtime supporters. “It’s important to keep them in touch and to get input from them,” says Ms. Pandich. Others from Filoli’s old guard, such as Timmy Gallagher, Sally MacBride and Austin Hayne, also serve on the advisory board.
Ms. Pandich also reports to the governing board and the Friends of Filoli board.
The director is impressed that Filoli has 1,100 active volunteers, while at Lyndhurst she might have had 200. “We just couldn’t operate without them.”
She believes one reason volunteering thrives at Filoli is the number of opportunities to serve: in the house, garden, gift shop, cafe, and tour office. “We try to customize the volunteer experience.”
What about Filoli’s future? “We have a lot of capital projects, but are focusing on preservation,” says Ms. Pandich. “At a certain age, things need an overhaul. Right now, the tea house has some foundation issues.”
She hopes to complete the tea house work this year.
It’s been a busy year for Susanne Pandich, but she’s taking it in stride. “I’m a pretty fast learner,” she says.
