Mission Possible : Team Begins Work on Crumbling Church Walls at San Juan Capistrano

It has survived nearly 200 years of rain, swallows nests and even pillagers.

Until now, there have been no serious attempts to repair it. But finally, the weather-beaten ruins of the Great Stone Church at Mission San Juan Capistrano are getting some attention.

Armed with Q-Tips, gauze and adhesives, four preservationists from the University of Pennsylvania are beginning the delicate and painstaking process of repairing some of the rapidly disintegrating walls of what was once an architectural marvel of its time.

“It’s kind of an American Acropolis,” said mission administrator Jerry Miller. “Pretty soon, it will be a pile of rubble. Unless we act now, there will be nothing left.”

The $160,000 restoration, made possible by private donations to the mission and from the sale of memorial tiles, is only one step in what would be a lengthy repair process. Since a massive earthquake in 1812 toppled the church’s roof, its interior has faced the elements. For now, work is being done only on the three walls that are disintegrating fastest.

The work is only a fraction of the project, Miller said. Restoring the entire church would cost an estimated $7 million.

“The rest of the work will depend on our obtaining funds to do it,” Miller said.

The idea behind the project is not to rebuild the church, but to preserve the ancient ruins for future generations without having to add new materials.

“What we do on these three walls will be used as a model for the rest of the church,” said Dawn Melbourne, one of the four architectural preservationists working on the building. “It’s time consuming, but it’s very necessary.”

With help from a team of local architects, masons and structural engineers, the preservationists are working inch by inch along four-story scaffolds to stabilize the hand-plastered walls of the church.

“It’s a labor of love,” said Almyr Alba, a native of Panama who is working on the project. “It’s important to give people an understanding of what a place was like. It gives you a clue to the past.”

Over the next five months, the team will reattach the crumbling plaster with grout, brush adhesives on spots that need strengthening and reattach the fragile stones of the walls, which are falling to the ground.

Oddly, the preservationists found that many of those stones were not commonly used at the time: sandstone and volcanic tuff, a porous rock that easily falls apart when wet.

“It’s an extremely fragile material,” said Evin Erder, one of the team members. “I assume that they used it because it’s easy to carve and to carry.”

Completed in 1806, the church was built in a Roman style uncommon then. It also was the largest stone church in the United States, Miller said, and the only California mission church made of stone instead of the usual adobe.

It was said to be the most magnificent structure of its time in the region. Constructed in the form of a cross, it was 180 feet long, 85 feet wide, and about four stories high. Its 125-foot-high bell tower could be seen for 10 miles.

All of the construction materials were hewn from the area, with the volcanic tuff coming from the shores of Dana Point and the sandstone coming from the Mission Viejo area, Miller said.

But its history as a church is brief. The 1812 earthquake collapsed the domed arches, killing 40 people worshiping at its altar.

“What was never intended to be exposed--the interior--ended up outside,” Melbourne said. “The weather only accelerated the disintegration of the ruins.”

Mission officials hope eventually to get rid of the scaffolding that has held the structure up since 1989 and to install a protective canopy to prevent further damage from rain. They also hope to include an interpretive center with pictorials depicting church life before the earthquake, and lighting for the front court.

But it will be a long time before any of this comes to pass, mission officials say. For now, they are continuing their fund-raising program for the church restoration by selling memorial tiles for $100 to $300 on which individuals and families can have their names engraved. “Hopefully, someday everyone of those stones in the courtyard will have somebody’s name on it,” said Jim Graves, a spokesman for the mission.