A Cathedral Rises
First a vision of faith, then a blueprint, the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels is quickly being transformed from concept to tactile experience.
Rising from rows of steel reinforcing bars and tons of poured concrete, the $163-million cathedral’s outer walls are edging above a construction fence that until recently blocked the view of passersby.
But day by day, the monumental size of the new mother church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles is becoming evident. By year’s end, the outer walls--a salmon color reminiscent of 18th century California adobe missions--will soar more than 12 stories above Temple Street and Grand Avenue.
Ultimately, the walls will embrace a 3,000-seat nave--a foot longer than that of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York--infused with outdoor light filtered through delicately veined windows of translucent alabaster. The pivots are in place on which the two 5-ton, three-story bronze doors will swing.
In what will become a 2 1/2-acre landscaped plaza called Cathedral Square, contours are materializing of two grand staircases, a 36-bell carillon, the precipice of a waterfall and a fountain to be inscribed with Jesus’ promise of “living water” to those who thirst for God.
Nearby, the separate Cathedral Conference Center and residences for the cardinal-archbishop of Los Angeles and priests now rise two stories on the east end of the site at Temple and Hill streets. The buildings are expected to be ready for occupancy in January. The cathedral itself is scheduled to open by the spring of 2002.
Advocates of the cathedral see it as a visible sign of inward, spiritual longings--a concrete expression of the human quest for transcendence in God. Cardinal Roger M. Mahony calls it a cathedral for all people where social and economic distinctions dissolve in the presence of the ineffable.
Critics such as the Catholic Worker, which serves the poor and homeless, say the money would have been better spent on direct services to the poor. As of Thursday, $150 million had been raised in cash and pledges. The archdiocese hopes to have all $163.2 million by the year’s end.
Whatever the religious and philosophical arguments, for now most attention is focused on the job at hand.
A Building to Last 300 Years
The crucial day-to-day coordination and construction of the cathedral, designed by Spanish architect Jose Rafael Moneo, is being supervised by the international firm of Leo A. Daly.
Initial work began in October 1998 and focused on building an earthquake-proof foundation, a three-level subterranean garage and a crypt chapel below the future cathedral.
Now, two cranes, one 160 feet high and the other 180 feet high, swing over workers below, lifting handcrafted wooden forms into which a total of 55,000 cubic yards of concrete will be poured by the time the job is done. Eventually, the cathedral roof will rise to within 20 feet of the level of the 160-foot crane.
Being built to last at least 300 years, the cathedral could well stand for a millennium, barring a decision by future leaders to replace it, said Nicholas W. Roberts, the project manager. Even a 300-year useful lifetime is impressive when compared with the 50- to 100-year useful life for which such major landmarks as the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in New York and the Library Tower in Los Angeles were designed.
“To build something that will last for 300 to 500 years is not something we in the building industry have an opportunity to do very often, nor are we expected to,” said David Arredondo, cathedral architect with Leo A. Daly. “If a building makes it through one lifetime, that’s a pretty good accomplishment, but to survive three, four, five generations is certainly an interesting challenge--and something I won’t have the benefit of working on in the rest of my career again,” Arredondo said.
One reason builders believe the new cathedral will be able to stand for centuries is that it will sit on 200 base isolators--each with 2 1/2 feet of rubber between the base plate and top plate on which the building sits. Those are designed to ensure that the cathedral (and a separate 160-foot campanile) will be able to withstand major quakes.
The design is supposed to allow the cathedral to ride out a magnitude 7 earthquake on the downtown faults such as the Elysian Park thrust and a magnitude 8.3 quake on the Mojave segment of the San Andreas fault.
Because air pollutants and weather gradually eat away at concrete, builders plan to cover all horizontal surfaces of the concrete with copper flashing. Eventually the copper will turn a patina of green. The high-grade concrete will be resealed every 10 years.
Over time, the exterior walls will become lighter and take on a patina of their own. “It gives it a nice evolving quality,” Arredondo said. “That seems rather fitting for a timeless piece of architecture.”
A shingle effect on the outer walls will allow the sun and shadows to play against an otherwise flat monolith. There is not a single right angle on the cathedral’s exterior.
Although some critics have faulted the design as untraditional, project manager Roberts, an architect with Leo A. Daly, said the design is intended to look to the future.
“I feel it would be a mistake for the building to look backward to the forms of an earlier era,” said Roberts, who grew up in England amid great Gothic cathedrals. “Instead, this building looks to the future. The dynamic form looks forward. But there are subtle references to the history of the church. Artwork will refer back to the continuity of Catholic traditions. Murals will refer to the history of the church in California.”
Continuity, journey and transformation are what architects, builders and church officials say the cathedral will represent.
“The cathedral is itself transformative of the whole city. True, a cathedral may transform by bringing new life and energy to the inner city, as we have seen in San Antonio, Seattle and Louisville,” Mahony said in an address on cathedral ministries last January in San Antonio. “But far more importantly, the cathedral is transformative of the city and its people by reminding them, inspiring in them, evoking from them a deep awareness of what a city is to be and become.”
Mahony said he was thinking of more than civic pride and urban renewal. Ultimately, he said, “the cathedral is an eschatological symbol, calling all who see it and dwell therein to the realization of all that is good and noble . . . inviting all to the fulfillment of the human capacity for the true, the good, the beautiful.”
