No End in Sight : Restoration of Quake-Damaged Mission Delayed by ‘Frustrating’ Lack of Funds

Members of the San Gabriel Mission’s boards of directors are still affected by the sight of the wreckage left in the wake of last October’s earthquake.

“It’s very disturbing,” said Michael Falabrino, who heads the board’s Restoration Committee, as he stood at the top of the bell tower, where the earthquake had gouged out large patches of mortar.

Long, jagged fissures snake across the walls. The baptistery, its domed roof ruptured by an ugly gash, threatens to fall away from the main part of the church. The mission’s famed bell tower, with its distinctive asymmetrical constellation of six church bells, is deeply cracked. Loose mortar and paint chips still crunch underfoot.

The mission and its museum have been closed for 10 months, their entrances blocked by yellow plastic tape, and there is no happy ending in sight, board members say.

They estimate that they will need at least $2 million to make the structures usable and more than double that to restore the buildings to their former glory.

Money has been trickling in, said Helen Nelson, the parish secretary and secretary-chairwoman of the Restoration Committee, “but it’s frustrating.”

The state Office of Emergency Services has contributed $350,000 for the restoration of the museum, but state and federal laws prohibit public funds from being used to restore the church. “Churches are essentially excluded because of the separation of church and state provision,” said Richard Andrews, deputy director of the state agency.

The mission’s parish, which consists of about 2,200 families, has dug deep and raised about $170,000. “That’s out of their own pocketbooks,” Nelson said. “They’ve been very generous.”

Mission officials have also applied to numerous foundations for financial assistance. “Some of them (foundations) only meet annually or semi-annually. It takes time,” said Falabrino, a former San Gabriel City Councilman.

No one was willing to predict when the mission or museum would reopen.

Although no work has begun on the parts of the mission damaged by the earthquake, a $35,000 restoration of the church’s 178-year-old altar is under way. Specialists from the South Coast Fine Arts Conservation Center in Santa Barbara are scrubbing away excess paint and varnish from wooden panels and statues of saints. The project, which will he completed next month, was funded before the earthquake.

Bronze paint has been removed from some of the gold-leaf molding on the reredo, the wooden panel at the back of the altar, and conservators have begun washing away patches of what Carol Kenyon, director of the restoration program, calls “bubble gum pink” paint to replace it with the altar piece’s original lilac-tinged whites.

“It’s going to be a very formal piece when we’re finished,” Kenyon said.

Meanwhile, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which owns the mission, has yet to offer any assistance to repair the quake damage. Most archdiocesan officials, including Archbishop Roger Mahony, were on vacation last week, but officials from the church construction office said they are primarily involved now in bringing pre-1933 church buildings in Los Angeles into accordance with city earthquake standards.

Larry Tatone, archdiocese director of construction, acknowledged that he hasn’t seen the mission since the quake. “I’ve talked to a couple of structural engineers about it. I know the cost is going to be astronomical.”

Church officials expressed some disappointment that archdiocese officials have yet to visit the mission, one of the oldest structures in Los Angeles County. Settlers gathered there in 1781 before going on to found the city of Los Angeles.

The failure of archdiocesan officials to visit the mission is “hard to understand,” Nelson said.

Before the October shaker, three Masses were celebrated every Sunday in the mission. Between 30 and 40 baptisms were performed every Saturday in the little baptistery, a structure jutting from the church’s north wall. A sign on the wall commemorates the mission’s first baptism, performed in 1771 on “a child of pagan parents” by Father Angel Somera.

“I myself was baptized here, along with a brother, a sister and two cousins,” Falabrino said. “It was on a Columbus Day, approximately 1923.”

Most church functions are performed in the mission’s 30-year-old Chapel of the Enunciation, just north of the original mission grounds.

Besides Masses, baptisms, weddings and funerals, the mission--a state historical monument--was visited by between 400 and 500 schoolchildren a week during school months. Most of them were fourth-graders, helping to satisfy their state requirements to study California history, Nelson said.

The church also has served as a concert hall at Christmas for San Gabriel High School’s choir and as the site for graduation ceremonies for a nearby nursing school.

“This has always been a community facility,” Nelson said. “But when it comes to expenses, that’s a different story.”

The October earthquake, which measured 5.9 on the Richter scale, caused more damage to the mission than any quake since 1812. The mission withstood major earthquakes in 1858, 1933 and 1971. “After the 1971 earthquake, we didn’t even have paint chips on the floor,” Nelson said.

The restoration plan is to use modern restoration techniques to shore up the church and the museum, which was originally the founding padres’ rectory.

Structural engineers from the Pasadena firm of Arevalo Mamian & Arevalo have proposed adding a “sandwich” of concrete to the adobe walls of the museum and a hidden steel frame to the Roman-style, stone-and-mortar walls of the church. An epoxy-like grout would be forced into open cracks, reinforcing the walls, said engineer Rafy Mamian.

The shingle roofs of both buildings would be replaced with Spanish tile, he added.

The museum represents a serious challenge to engineers, Mamian said. “It’s just adobe, which has no structural value at all,” he said.

Church officials eventually plan to restore the mission to the way it looked in the 1830s, Nelson said. “We have documentation on the building going back that far,” she said.