The Living <i> Lavanderia </i>

I was surprised and frustrated to read the article about the decision the Ventura City Council made concerning the lavanderia under the Pierano building across from the San Buenaventura Mission (“City Wants Historic Pool Left Uncovered,” Nov. 4 ). The reporter referred to this as a “pool that may have been used to wash clothes.”

There is no doubt whatsoever that the “pool” was used to wash clothes. Every mission had an aqueduct system to bring water from whatever source was available to the places where it was needed. San Buenaventura’s water pipe system began seven miles up Ventura River at San Antonio Creek.

The water came first to the El Cabballo, a settling tank on the hill overlooking the corner of Main Street and Ventura Avenue--the name came from a figure of a horse’s head from whose mouth the overflow water poured. From there pipes led off to the large garden and the mission quadrangle, and to San Miguel Chapel nearer the ocean. This was not just a church where people came on Sunday; this was a community of up to 3,000 people, living and working together, reinterpreting a way of life begun in Spain half a world and more than a lifetime away.

Picture Chumash women, who a short time ago had not even worn much in the way of clothes, now gathering regularly to make soap and wash clothes in front of the workrooms where they carded the wool, spun the yarn, wove the material and made the clothes. Imagine sitting among those women as they gathered around this lavanderia, chatting partly in their Chumash dialect, partly in Spanish. Did they talk about children, husbands, other women, about their work, the priests, coming fiestas?

I hope our children will have a chance to imagine such a setting by looking at the best of only two well-preserved lavanderias still existing in California. Places where women gathered and chatted and worked and raised their children are equally important to understanding a culture as the finest cathedrals and most prestigious mansions. Let’s not lose this one.

RUTH A. HIBBARD

Ventura

Ruth Hibbard is chairwoman of docent education for the Ventura County Museum of History and Art.