La Jolla Church’s Design Has Stood the Test of Time

At the end of the workday, people spill out of La Jolla’s slick, new office buildings, their cars crowding the village’s main streets. Mary Star of the Sea Church on Girard Avenue, meanwhile, seems protected by a shield of calm. Light from the waning sun falls across the church’s smooth, white walls, and deep shadows throw its strong forms into stark relief.

The church was designed by Carleton Monroe Winslow and completed in 1937. Winslow is best known in San Diego as the architect-in-residence during construction of many of the buildings in Balboa Park for the Panama-California Exposition, held in 1915. Bertram Goodhue, the lead architect for that project, hired Winslow to supervise the completion of several of Goodhue’s designs (including the landmark California Tower). Winslow designed many buildings himself, including the House of Hospitality.

Winslow did some of his finest work in Los Angeles. In San Diego, his best includes a group of three fine redwood bungalows in Burlingame and St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Del Mar, a rustic wood building that shows a kinship to the three homes.

Church design is a narrow specialty not practiced by many architects, and Winslow obviously excelled. Mary Star of the Sea isn’t his best-known church. That distinction may go to Mary Star of Angels in Los Angeles.

Mission Revival Style

Yet the La Jolla church exerts a special pull. You’d think that being a house of worship would be enough to raise it above other buildings, but a look at many San Diego churches shows that more than religion is needed to inspire great architecture.

The real magnetism of Winslow’s La Jolla design can be attributed to his sensitive interpretation of the Mission Revival style. By the 1930s, Winslow was actually one of the few stragglers still experimenting with the genre; the Mission Revival movement, which was common in most California cities, had peaked 20 years earlier.

Actually, the church is not pure Mission Revival. It has the tile roofs, deep-set window and door openings, heavy wood beams and thick masonry walls typical of the style. But it also has a Gothic arch for a main entry and steep, straight gables with none of the curves typical of mission walls.

For anyone aware of local history, especially the style of the early missions and rancho buildings, Winslow’s church is a dreamy evocation of the past. Because of its perfect proportions and tasteful detailing, it is much more than a piece of nostalgia.

“It was probably a perfect solution to whatever design problems they had at the time,” said Pacific Beach architect Joseph Dameron, who designed a small chapel addition for the church in the early ‘60s. “It gives you a very religious feeling of participating in the Mass, being part of the group, a community feeling.

“I think the seating arrangement and the proportions are responsible. Remember the movie ‘The Godfather,’ when the baby was getting baptized and everyone was killing everyone? That church looked a block long, and all sense of participation was lost. People in the back must have felt like spectators.

“I think Winslow’s church fits well there. He took into account where it was located, and what buildings might be built around it in the future. He was a good planner.”

Winslow’s sense of proportion is also excellent, not only of the exterior forms, but of significant interior features. The dimensions of beams, trusses and columns are all appropriately scaled, such that worshipers probably feel humble but never overwhelmed.

Fine craftsmanship is everywhere. Vertical members of the roof-beam system sprout out into four curved pieces that gracefully meet the roof. The joinery is meticulous.

Winslow adeptly manipulated the interior, creating a series of spaces that add to one’s sense of security. Arched openings give access to the side aisles while maintaining privacy for the congregation. The windows, set deep in the thick concrete walls, add Mission romance.

Madonna on a Sliver of Moon

Over the years, several artists have been commissioned to decorate the building. In 1937, Mexican muralist Alfred Ramos Martinez painted the original front facade mural depicting Mary against a background of blue sky and abstracted ocean ripples, winged angels at her sides. Twenty-five years later, the work had faded beyond repair and was replaced with a mosaic tile mural fabricated in Rome.

In 1956, artist John Henry de Rosen, known for his ecclesiastical work, added a large mural of a Madonna standing on a sliver of moon over a moonlit sea to the previously blank back wall of the sanctuary.

Some of the art has been altered over the years. Stations of the Cross along the side walls, and a statue of Mary, both originally covered with delicate silver leaf, were painted over under the direction of a pastor who thought they looked shabby, according to Dr. William Doyle, the author of a history of the building.

And there’s no explaining the loss of the original stone baptismal font. According to Doyle’s text, prepared for the church’s diamond anniversary in 1981 (Winslow’s design replaced the original 1906 building), the font “is now in a church in Baja California.”

The church’s design is definitely under-appreciated. Church officials in La Jolla could find little information about its history and seemed unimpressed that it might be worth a story. Apparently, the only historical file kept is the one in the Catholic Diocese’s archives on the University of San Diego campus. Even that contains little information on Winslow’s involvement with the project or its architectural merits.

Some afternoon, perhaps after catching a matinee at The Cove movie theater across the street, wander over to the church. Pause outside and let its warmth and humanity work on you. This inviting quality is what the postmodernists were trying to bring back to architecture with their sometimes awkward combinations of columns, arches and pediments. Some of those exercises, completed within the past five years, already look dated. But the simple materials and forms of Mary Star of the Sea Church still seem impressive more than 50 years after it was built.

DESIGN NOTES: Chancellor Richard Atkinson and Vice Chancellor Harold Ticho are interviewing four finalists for the position of dean of UC San Diego’s new school of architecture. None of the candidates is from San Diego. . . . San Diego’s Krommenhoek McKeown Associates is designing a $4-million building for General Motors in Orange County. . . . Ground was broken Friday on the East-West Design Complex, designed by San Diego architects RNP for a site on 4th Avenue in the Gaslamp Quarter.