L.A. Conservancy and St. Vibiana’s
* If the Los Angeles Conservancy doesn’t speak up in the name of historic preservation, just who will? Not the mayor or the City Council, this is certainly clear.
As a native Angeleno too young to have ever seen anything but photographs of the old Bunker Hill site, I have often wondered how so many wonderful buildings could be so easily erased. The St. Vibiana’s Cathedral issue makes it all too clear; no one at City Hall really cares. It’s a nonissue for the mayor and the council.
L.A. Conservancy leaders have every right to ask the tough questions; they represent the only preservation voice in this city of very lost angels. The politics of this issue are so transparent it makes me ill.
RICHARD BARRON
Los Angeles
* Thank you for the evenhanded presentation on the pros and cons of the big controversy over the possible demolition of St. Vibiana’s Cathedral. I enjoyed the four articles in the Opinion section June 9.
Personally, I hope a happy solution to all concerns will be found and that the proposed cathedral complex is built in downtown Los Angeles. However, I’m firmly behind Cardinal Mahony and any decisions he makes in this regard. St. Vibiana’s is still just “a nice old church in a rundown corner of downtown” to me and demolishing it--the hull of the building--bothers me not at all, since the windows, statues, altar, etc., are all being retained.
LORETTA L. TYSON
Los Angeles
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