DIVERSIONS : An Admiring Glance at Houses of Worship : Architecture: Southern California churches and temples feed the soul and the eye. Unique designs bestow extra blessings.

Every weekend, millions unite in prayer at some of the Southland’s most exquisite buildings: its houses of worship.

These local landmarks--among Los Angeles’ finest architectural developments--celebrate mankind’s quest for spirituality, universal truth and its desire for union with a higher being.

There are hundreds--ranging from humble one-story clapboard cottages to towering Gothic cathedrals. All are constructed to evoke feelings of community and spirituality. Some reflect our early past; others presage an unknown future. All are open to the public.

Southern California’s first religious buildings were adobe-and-brick Spanish missions, built more than 200 years ago by Father Junipero Serra and a band of hard-working Franciscan priests and Indian laborers to help expand the Spanish empire.

Mission San Gabriel, 537 W. Mission Dr., San Gabriel, is one such structure, built in 1771 in Moorish style, with 6-foot-thick walls, campanario bells, reflecting pools and painted-wood statues of saints. This mission was inhabited by Spanish monks, Gabrielino Indians and soldiers and adventurers who passed through the Southland wilderness on their way to distant settlements.

In 1818, the San Gabriel Mission padres donated seven barrels of brandy and 1,000 head of cattle to raise funds for the construction of Los Angeles’ oldest existing house of worship, La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora la Reina de Los Angeles (the Church of Our Lady, Queen of Angels) 535 N. Main St., Los Angeles. It is a Mission-style building, with an espadana (belfry wall), arched entries and an ornate mosaic “Annunciation” panel that reproduces a detail from the Porciuncula chapel at Assisi. Today, La Iglesia houses the largest Latino congregation in Los Angeles.

As American and Mexican settlers streamed into Los Angeles, they erected makeshift meeting halls to house their religious services. But congregations grew rapidly; these temporary quarters were abandoned as newer, larger, more permanent and impressive buildings were constructed in their place.

One such extant church is St. Vibiana’s Cathedral, 114 E. 2nd St., Los Angeles (1876), modeled after Church of Puerto de San Miguel in Barcelona, Spain.

In keeping with European tradition, the church houses precious relics of St. Vibiana, an early Christian martyr whose remains were discovered near Rome in 1853. St. Vibiana’s Cathedral features an Italianate facade, 83-foot bell tower and ornate interior complete with marble-and-onyx altar, barrel-vaulted coffered ceiling, Corinthian columns and an abstract mural of the heavens. Today, St. Vibiana’s is the see of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

By the 1880s, first-generation immigrants from Eastern and Midwestern states were pouring into Los Angeles to take advantage of its friendly climate and cheap real estate. The newcomers settled in L.A.’s already-growing outlying environs and erected churches in the styles of their European ancestries.

The Church of the Angels, 1100 Avenue 64, Pasadena (1889), is one such church, built by two British architects and modeled after Holmbury St. Mary’s in Dorking, England. It is a simple stonework edifice, a romantic blend of Gothic and Romanesque styles, situated atop a grassy hill. Its 19th-Century interior, decorative and colorful, has been artfully preserved.

Los Angeles’ “great church building boom” occurred in the 1920s. The city’s population had passed 1.5 million; more than 400,000 automobiles traveled its newly paved streets, particularly Adams Boulevard and Wilshire Boulevard, a then-residential avenue extending from Santa Monica to downtown.

St. John’s Episcopal Church, 514 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles (1922), is a striking example of the city’s 1920s architectural renaissance. It is modeled after an 11th-Century Norman-style church in Toscanella, Italy, and boasts 2 1/2-foot-thick concrete walls, medieval red-leather doors, decorative Corinthian columns, gleaming stained glass, rose windows, and magnificent gold mosaics and marble carvings.

Los Angeles’ largest houses of worship were constructed along the “Miracle Mile,” the portion of Wilshire Boulevard from Beverly Hills to midtown. Attendance during the 1920s was at an all-time high. Some Wilshire Boulevard congregations boasted 4,000 members.

Among them, the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, 3663 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles (1929), the oldest, largest Jewish Reform Synagogue in Los Angeles. It is a Byzantine structure capped by a 135-foot-tall dome above a three-arch portal rich in marble inlay. It houses an exhibit center featuring treasures of the Jewish faith, a sanctuary of black Belgian marble columns, teakwood doors, gold altar fixtures, bronze chandeliers and a series of murals designed by famed artist Hugo Ballin, depicting 3,000 years of Jewish history.

The Depression halted construction of most houses of worship in Los Angeles, but the 1940s ushered in a new wave of unusual religious monuments catering to the needs of growing, evolving spiritual communities.

St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral, 1324 S. Normandie Ave., Los Angeles (1948), has been called “one of the most beautiful churches in the world.” It is traditional Byzantine in style, with a 90-foot dome and simple unadorned exterior. But inside St. Sophia’s is an exquisitely lavish nave (worship area) dripping in gold, rich murals, icons and bronze. Twenty-one Czechoslovakian crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling. Stained-glass windows depict scenes of the Apostles and the Holy Trinity.

Los Angeles’ downtown congregations eventually dwindled as members relocated to suburbs, and downtown real-estate values skyrocketed. As church attendance during the 1950s and 1960s dropped off dramatically, smaller buildings in modernistic styles were designed to house fewer members.

One such house of worship, the Wayfarer’s Chapel, Portuguese Bend at Abalone Cove, Palos Verdes (1951), was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son, Lloyd Wright. It is a “natural church” of glass, redwood and Palos Verdes stone nestled in a lush forest setting, surrounded by babbling streams, azalea gardens and a glowing reflection pool. The Wayfarer’s Chapel interior is open and airy; its exterior is a union of the natural world and man-made ingenuity.

St. Basil’s Roman Catholic Church, 3611 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, was constructed in 1974. It is an example of the starkly powerful modernist designs that took form in Los Angeles during the 1970s.

The building is commanding--a towering mass of monumental concrete forms extending ever skyward, flanking an immense bank of stained glass windows shielded by metal meshwork. This glass-and-metal sculpture creates an exciting textural contrast to the concrete. Inside is an equally awe-inspiring vista--a dizzying collaboration of space and strength, where concrete structural work symbolizing permanence blends with redwood ornamentation representing life.

Future houses of worship in Los Angeles’ future may combine elements of the past with visions of tomorrow. Such is the impact of internationally known Crystal Cathedral, Chapman Avenue and Lewis Street, Garden Grove (1980), which houses a congregation of more than 10,000.

The cathedral features an all-glass exterior of more than 10,000 individual windows framed by lacework steel, a chancel area of Spanish marble and a 17-foot gold cross detailed in 18-karat gold leaf. Huge white concrete columns support the structure’s expansive balconies. The cathedral’s 16,000-piece organ is the world’s largest church organ.

Of equal interest, though on a much smaller scale, is St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, 1030 Bienveneda Ave., Pacific Palisades (1982), which combines the intimate meeting-hall scale of long ago with a starkly modern natural-wood-and-glass “open” design, appreciated today. At sunset, autumn shadows sweep the church’s interior. An unusual glass-encased campanile stands sentry beside the church.