Rising From the Ruins

Great cities work in mysterious ways, and we can now thank the L.A. Conservancy for achieving what Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, the mayor, the City Council and all the king’s men could not. It has forced them to abandon their plan to build Los Angeles’ new cathedral at the dreadful, doomed location of the old cathedral and to consider new possibilities.

That result, of course, is the opposite of what the conservancy had hoped to achieve. It wanted the archdiocese to preserve St. Vibiana’s, the earthquake-damaged old cathedral, and raise the new cathedral next to it. But the ensuing litigation so vexed the cardinal that he has now sworn to wash his hands of the old site.

Hooray. In the scum-covered, abandoned-building district of St. Vibiana’s, the new cathedral would have been swallowed by the decay as surely as the old. We now have a chance to see the new cathedral rise on a spot that would make downtown feel halfway like a real city.

In most major cities, a cathedral serves as an anchor of the city’s core. It offers both drama and serenity, a place where the pedestrian finds his eyes drawn upward. Cathedrals lend gravity to downtowns, offering a sense of authority that no mammon-serving high-rise can command.

In truth, and with all due respect to St. Vibiana’s, Los Angeles has never had such a cathedral. Poor St. Vibs; it possessed neither the size, the design nor the location to perform its role and, thus, sank into invisibility. Now, thanks to the conservancy, Los Angeles has its first chance in many generations to put a new cathedral in the right place.

But the struggle to find the right place has not been won. Not yet. Incredibly, the archdiocese now claims to be favoring another war-zone location across the Harbor Freeway from downtown. Mahony put the best possible spin on this site during his news conference Monday when he said it offers a great view of downtown.

Look, if you’re spending $50 million on a cathedral, you don’t want that cathedral to have a view of downtown. You want it to be the view. At this site, next to the abandoned Union Oil Building, the cathedral would rise from its pile of rubble so far from the real downtown you would have to take a car to reach it.

Let’s be optimistic and assume that Mahony is only teasing about the cross-freeway site. A great joker, the cardinal, and he has been known to use such ploys before as a device to shake out a better deal somewhere else.

In fact, Mahony’s written statement on Monday suggested as much, first claiming the church had entered “the final stages” of a deal to cross the freeway and then coyly inviting state and local governments to help it find another “splendid” site near the Civic Center.

We know the identity of most, if not all, the other possible locations. Among them are a couple of woofers that should be rejected immediately: a parking lot hard by the Hollywood Freeway on Temple Street and another spot across the street from St. Vibiana’s that would offer no improvement.

No, what’s needed is a spot not only with high visibility but the right kind of visibility. For example, one possible site would put the cathedral on Bunker Hill, across the street from the yet-to-be-built Disney Concert Hall designed by architect Frank Gehry. And down the block from the Museum of Contemporary Art, designed by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki.

Lots of high visibility. But since the cathedral itself will be designed by Jose Rafael Moneo, there would also be this trio of modern, showy buildings all competing with each other in the space of a block or so. It won’t do, and besides, a Bunker Hill site would leave the church looking like it had retreated to the same rich enclave as the big banks and the stock brokerages.

And that leaves the last, perfect spot. Some 25 years ago the state of California demolished its office building on 1st Street between Spring and Broadway. For a while, after the demolition, the grounds served as an impromptu park. Then came the bad times, the high fences, the drug selling within sight of City Hall.

On a couple of occasions, high-rise projects were announced for the site but nothing came of them. The real estate market collapsed downtown and has yet to see a revival. The three governments that own the land--the state, the city and county--have received exactly zip for their investment over the last two decades.

This spot, with all its troubled history, would serve splendidly. Sitting across the street from City Hall, it has that quality of centrality while also remaining slightly apart, a thing unto itself. This location has dignity, presence and position; everything, in short, that a first-rate cathedral needs.

One disclaimer here: This site also sits across the street from the Los Angeles Times, making me vulnerable to the accusation of shilling for the company. And, true enough, the paper would benefit by this arrangement. But the greatest benefit would arise from the cathedral offering journalists a convenient place to go and confess their many sins.

Otherwise, it’s one great spot. The only problems are the messy government ownership and, perhaps, the price. Every site has problems, no? And such problems as these were born to be solved by our great civic leadership.

Hey, where is the mayor when we need him?