Every time I think I'm done with Vibiana, something else comes up.
HossC's
post with the 1977 Shulman photos got me digging around again. I'm no expert on this subject; additions and corrections are welcome. If you're thoroughly tired of Vibiana, just skip this post.
I closely followed the concerted attack on Vibiana in the late 90s. For me, it was very reminiscent of what I'd read about the one launched against Lugo House and every bit as distressing. The same bad-faith arguments were used against both, but they didn't work in Vibiana's case, but not for lack of trying. The forces arrayed against the building were formidable and ferocious.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CityBoyDoug
In my opinion, the LA Archdiocese has treated the former LA Cathedral in an irreverent damaged goods manner.
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"It has been one insult atop another for stately old St. Vibiana's, the cathedral as obscure as its namesake, maligned since its conception."
- Cathleen Decker, LAT, 1987
That seems to be true
CBD, but not just after Vibiana was deconsecrated. It's been said numerous times (see quote above, for example) that St Vibiana's (1871-76) was never liked by church officials (I don't know if that included Bishop Thaddeus Amat, 1810-1878, who had St Vib's built, but he never wanted to come to California to begin with). The new cathedral was altogether too naif and provincial to suit some. There were dark hints at poor quality construction too (a criticism not born out by time). The people seemed to like it though (they still do). It was charming and accessible. People of all faiths contributed to the building fund.
uscdl
I've read that a
much larger cathedral, 116' x 262' was planned to rise on land donated by Ozro W Childs, a Protestant, on the west side of Main, just north of 6th, taking up the entire depth of the block to Spring St. Reports said three thousand people, out of a population of less than six thousand, attended the cornerstone-laying ceremony in 1869. However, as it turned out, the plans were inappropriately ambitious, leading to the project's collapse (this was the second time Amat had been stymied while trying to get a St Vibiana cathedral off the ground. The first was in Santa Barbara. The Franciscans were the problem there).
A smaller-scale cathedral project, 82' x 178', got restarted two years later on a bit of land, donated by Amiel Cavallier, on the east side of Main at 2nd, closer into town. When the work flagged in 1873 because of a disorganized builder, Alsatian
Louis Mesmer, 1829-1900 (owner of the United States Hotel), stepped in and supervised construction to completion.
The T-junction of 2nd and Main in 1871, where Vibiana would soon start to rise. Second Street wasn't extended to the east until 1888-1889:
ucla/augustus koch, cartographer
Kysor and Matthews ad in the 28 Sept 1875 LA Herald. Matthews had only recently joined the firm, so didn't have much to do with the almost-completed cathedral:
cdnc
Architect Ezra Kysor (1835-1907) did what he could to replicate the stone facade of Iglesia de Sant Miquel del Port (Pedro Martín Cermeño, 1753) in Bishop Amat's hometown of Barcelona, but he only had red brick to work with. There was no money for deluxe stone to clad it with or to decorate the interior. The sanctuary columns were of wood with a painted, faux-marble finish. But what the cathedral lacked in polish, it more than made up for in design. The lovely tower (not a feature of the Barcelona church) perfectly balanced the lively facade at the west end.
oldLAenvirons (detail)
findagrave
The other prominent buildings built before the cathedral included the Arcadia Block (1858), the Clocktower Courthouse (1859), Plaza church (1861) St Vincent's College (1867) and Pico House (1869-70). Temple Block (1871) and and LAHS (1872) were built at the same time St Vibiana's was rising (just two of these buildings are left). St Vibiana's looked very impressive to ordinary people and they were delighted by its prettiness. Not so church officials. St Vibiana's represented a loss of prestige, a constant reminder of their lingering disappointment and embarrassment regarding the debacle at 6th and Main. Added to this was St. Vibiana herself. Hopelessly obscure and only given a "hurried" and "quick" "equivalent canonization" because of the lack of a life story, she didn't confer the prestige the powerful craved. (St Vibiana was a personal enthusiasm of Pope Pius IX, 1782-1878, she was soon forgotten by Rome after his death; her feast day was dropped from the church's liturgical calendar in the 1950s).
On 30 April, 1876, the cathedral was dedicated by Metropolitan Archbishop Alemany of San Francisco. He paid homage to the Franciscans' "early trials in redeeming from savagery our fair and prosperous state". The final cost for the new building was $80K.
Both Amat and Pius IX died in 1878, two years after the cathedral was dedicated.
In an effort to tart-up the interior, Bishop Francisco Mora y Borrell (1827-1905), Amat's successor, bought a boat-load of onyx and marble in 1895 to spread around inside, but this still wasn't doing the trick and was only meant to be a temporary solution anyway. In 1900, bolstered by the fact that the cathedral was becoming too small for the population it was supposed to serve, plans were made by new bishop, George Thomas Montgomery (1847-1907), to replace the 24-year-old building with something more glorious to reflect and enhance the status of the church.
However, in 1902 Bishop Montgomery was reassigned to San Francisco to assist the Archbishop in that city. Montgomery died there five years later.
Incoming Bishop Thomas James Conaty, 1847-1915 (we've heard of him
before) took office in 1903 and got to work right away to realize his predecessor's plans. Conaty envisioned a huge suburban cathedral, topped by a vast dome, well away from the business district:
"It was my desire to secure a place that was in a distinctively residential district, where there could be no possible chance for change in character of surrounding buildings..."
(Famous last words those)
To that end, Bishop Conaty purchased most of the block bounded by Green, 8th, Whittier (now Columbia) and 9th (now James M Wood Blvd) in the Westlake district.
Plate No. 8 of the 1910 Baist map reflected the new reality:
historic mapworks
The 16 Aug 1903 issue of the Los Angeles Herald detailed Bishop Conaty's ambitious plans, not just a cathedral, but also a residence, three more parish churches and a high school:
cdnc
Papal permission was given to Conaty to tear down St Vibiana's and sell the site to help finance the new cathedral which would be dedicated to the Virgin of Guadalupe, not St Vibiana.
Boston architects Maginnis, Walsh and Sullivan drew up the plans, which were approved by the city. The budget was $1MM. (For a drawing of Conaty's proposed cathedral, see
here)
But, with one thing and another, as sometimes happens with even the best laid plans, Bishop Conaty's ambitions came to naught. He died in 1915. (A new parish church and school complex was built in the 1940s on the cathedral site Conaty bought.)
Archbishop John Joseph Cantwell (1874-1947), who took charge in 1917, found it in the budget to hire John C. Austin to rework St Vib's facade and clad it in limestone in 1922-24 to mollify those few disappointed that a new cathedral hadn't been built after all. However, the newly severe, overly-heavy west end, now brought flush with the sidewalk, was a poor match with the rest of the rosy, red-brick cathedral and seriously out of scale with the tower. The brick was plastered and painted in an unsuccessful attempt to match the limestone. The foyer was enlarged and its decor glamorized and gilded. Stained glass windows from Germany were installed in the sanctuary (the original rose window was replaced too). An added choir loft obscured the height of the sanctuary as viewed through the foyer doors. The landmark tower was left alone. Overall, the changes robbed the building of much of its original beauty and architectural integrity, amounting, some said, to vandalism (decades later this ill-conceived remodel would be used against Vibiana). The changes, however, did not dim most Angelenos affection for St Vib's, as that was based more on shared history and the building's important role as a link to the past.
The replacement facade and plastered walls in 1960, 36 years after the work was completed:
woodhaven historic
Twenty years on, in 1945, Archbishop Cantwell (famously a friend to Hollywood luminaries) finally turned his full attention to the "problem" of St Vibiana. Even though he'd spent a ton of money on the Austin remodel, he now dismissed St Vibiana's cathedral as akin to
"worn-out garments" and announced that he had gained papal permission to demolish the old cathedral and build a magnificent, massive, neo-Gothic basilica on a full block of Wilshire Blvd's "Park Mile", dedicated to the Our Lady of the Angels. The site, between Hudson and Keniston, extended south to W 8th Street. Architects Ross Montgomery and Hennert Frohman drew the plans for the proposed $1.5MM edifice. Cantwell's well-off friends looked forward to a glamorous venue for their weddings, christenings and funerals in a fashionable neighborhood. At last, some enthused, obscure Vibiana and her embarrassment of a cathedral would be relegated to the past. But Cantwell's health failed. He was dead two years later.
As cathedral planning hadn't gone well before, the next two heads of the archdiocese elected to concentrate on building new parish churches and schools.
As we've seen in the 1977 photos
HossC posted, the sanctuary was redecorated in 1975 after a fire and also coinciding with the building's 100th anniversary. The murals were replaced. Mosaic-patterned linoleum was laid over the sanctuary's wood floors. By then it was no longer fashionable to expose saint's relics for veneration (in the US anyway) so St Vibiana's relics, once encased in a silk-dressed, wax effigy and displayed in a plate-glass and gilt reliquary above the altar, were enclosed in a small marble bier which was kept behind gates on the south wall. Some of the long-deferred maintenance was addressed too, including replacing the cupola, weakened by dry rot, atop the tower's dome.
St Vibiana's last hurrah as a cathedral was when Pope John Paul II stayed in the rectory (Montgomery and Mullay, 1933) in 1987. The cathedral was deconsecrated nine years later, two years after the Northridge earthquake.
The 1994 quake gave us a glimpse of Vibiana's long-unseen red-brick walls. The 1924 plaster may have fallen off in patches, but the 1876 building didn't fall down:
Roger Cardinal Mahony, KGCHS (born in North Hollywood in 1936) came into office in 1985 (he was elevated from Archbishop to Cardinal in 1991), two years before the papal visit. His tenure will forever be tainted by his participation in the
cover-up of the church's sex-abuse scandal. His replacement, the current Archbishop, relieved Mahony of his duties and privileges in 2013 as a (mostly symbolic) punishment, after Mahony's personal files on the cover-up were made public. He was never prosecuted.
A close second to that scandal was Mahony's determination that a new cathedral should be built on his watch and the manner in which he went about it. Many Catholics, concerned about the great suffering among the archdiocese's faithful, felt money shouldn't be spent on a vanity project. Critics of a new building suggested that the church of St Vincent de Paul (A.C. Martin, 1925), W Adams at Figueroa, funded by the Dohenys, would do very well as a cathedral (this is actually what the Dohenys had hoped for). AC Martin Associates' St Basil's church (criticized as a "monument to opulence" by the Chicano Movement when built in 1969), on Wilshire at Kingsley, was also a candidate, but Mahony insisted on staying near his Civic Center power base (although he did flirt briefly with the idea of tearing down the UNOCAL building for a cathedral site) and refused to reuse any existing building. He wanted St Vib's razed, replaced and renamed, but with a much larger footprint. He also refused to include Vibiana in any new cathedral complex on the block. For its part, the City Council stripped Vibiana of its landmark status. The then-mayor, whose law firm was paid massive fees to manage the cover-up for Mahony, backed Mahony 100%. The late developer, Ira Yellin, Mahony's "project executive", wrote in support of demolition in a 1996 LAT article,
"Not Every Building Can Be Saved, St. Vibiana's: Religious needs and revitalizing L.A.'s core far outweigh a site with little historical or intrinsic value",
"[St Vibiana's] has no architectural merit and relatively minor historical value... [The 1924 and 1975 remodels] destroyed its integrity and value"...
"It is time for the [Los Angeles] Conservancy to end its destructive and wasteful lawsuit"
Seven members of the Catholic Workers movement scaled the tower of St Vibiana's in 1996 to protest the $45MM budget for a new cathedral. Mahony was unmoved (the final "official" cost was close to $190MM. The actual cost was unconscionable). Even before it was built, people began derisively referring to the new cathedral as "Taj Mahony" or "Rog Mahal". That's never stopped.
Everyone knows
the story of the attempted demolition and the thrilling last-second rescue of Vibiana and how the city traded the old cathedral for a parking lot on a remnant of Ft Moore Hill, between Temple and the Hollywood Freeway, the former site of another Ezra Kysor building, the Horticultural Pavilion. It burned to the ground.
Vibiana's illegally-demolished, 1975-era cupola restored, August 2007. Raff Rangel and Tom Lueras were the crane operators; Ron Truglia was project manager:
history,lacounty
The current cathedral's
website contains a self-serving dig (riddled with errors) aimed at both Vibiana and the Los Angeles Conservancy:
"...historical preservationists intervened and demanded that the old Cathedral be saved and incorporated into the new one. Such a proposal was impossible to consider because the old Cathedral lacked a foundation, reinforced walls and essential seismic safeguards. Legal challenges ensued, including court injunctions delaying the demolition.
The Archdiocese's engineers and contractors estimated that it would cost a minimum of eighteen to twenty million to save the old structure. No one, including the preservationists, would donate the kind of money needed to save the old Cathedral building".
Vibiana, of course, was not built without a foundation and the total cost to restore Vibiana, including seismic upgrades, was $6MM. The demolition wasn't just "delayed", it was stopped.
Retrofit and restoration in progress:
vibiana.com
So Vibiana is still there, despite the many official attempts to be rid of her; a serene, lasting landmark, well-loved and well-used by Angelenos.
vibiana.com
HossC, In Weber's 1975 Centennial History of Vibiana's it says the bells were removed from the tower on October 25, 1966 as a preventative measure. The two bells, cast in Baltimore in 1888, were dedicated to Manuel and Engracia Dominguez who made a large contribution to the 1871 building fund. The archdiocese has the bells in permanent storage.
.................................................
And as a very minor, but curious aside, in 1907, just before Bishop Conaty's cathedral-building plans in Westlake collapsed, he had an official bishops' retreat built at 144 Adelaide Drive in Santa Monica, designed by Conner and McGann. The land for the home was donated by
Juan Carillo, the first Mayor of Santa Monica and a member of the famous Carillo/Bandini clan (his mother was a sister of Arcadia Bandini de Stearns Baker. Jose Antonio Carillo, brother-in-law of the Picos and three time Alcalde of Los Angeles, was his uncle).
After Conaty died, wealthy widow Jeanette Donovan and her children,
future-screen-star and architect Jack and daughter Catherine, rented the home as a summer place through the late teens. (Jack Donovan, as some of you may recall, designed the
John C Leavitte home, 1923, at 501 Wilcox, which later played Lynn Bracken's home in "LA Confidential", 1997).
Dr. Rufus Bernhard von KleinSmid, enthusiastic eugenics supporter and USC Chancellor, was among subsequent owners.
In 1957
Mary Miles Minter and her mother
Charlotte Shelby (a suspect in William Desmond Taylor's murder) bought the home. It would be the last for both. Charlotte died soon after they moved in. Minter married a short time later, but her husband died in 1965. Mary lived on in the house until 1984 as a recluse. She died at home.
The Bishop T Conaty House in 1982, near the end of Mary Miles Minter's time there:
smpl/sonya sones
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