Discarded Cathedral Gates Provoke Secular Dilemma

Dan Giles does not call himself a religious man. But he has, he says, respect for God, those who worship, and monuments inspired by faith.

All of which leads the 60-year-old welder from Silver Lake to a quandary when he considers the stack of wrought iron gates resting in his yard: He got them as scrap and now figures they’ll fetch $50,000.

For decades, the eight gold-painted gates, each weighing several hundred pounds, adorned the shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe at St. Vibiana’s Cathedral in downtown Los Angeles.

But four years ago, about the time earthquake damage threatened St. Vibiana’s with a wrecking ball, Giles helped dismantle the shrine and placed the gates nearby.

Then, two years ago, he was again working at the crippled cathedral when a foreman told him to get rid of the gates.

“He asked me how much I wanted to haul them away,” Giles recalled Tuesday. “I just swallowed and said I’d take them for free.”

Now, Giles has the gates for sale on the Internet--$50,000 for the lot.

“I have a great respect for the church,” he said, “but at the same time, what are they doing throwing these things out?”

Then again, Giles acknowledged his own dilemma. He’s the one trying to unload them now.

At the archdiocese, spokesman Tod Tamberg confirmed Tuesday that the gates were part of a shrine at St. Vibiana’s that was disassembled when church officials concluded that they could not continue using the cathedral. After being placed outside the cathedral, Tamberg said, the gates were removed when an order was given to clean up St. Vibiana’s exterior.

“It was a mistake,” Tamberg said. “It wasn’t just set aside with disdain.

“You have to put things someplace and this is where they were placed, unfortunately,” Tamberg said. “And I don’t think there is much we can do about it now.”

St. Vibiana’s, a Spanish Baroque-style structure just two blocks south of City Hall, was built in 1876 and served as the serene Roman Catholic cathedral of Los Angeles until the Northridge earthquake of 1994. Two years later, declared unsafe without significant repairs, it was shuttered and plans were launched for the archdiocese’s new cathedral--the $163-million Our Lady of the Angels.

Enter Giles, a onetime social worker from Toledo.

Though he had performed various jobs at St. Vibiana’s for almost a decade, Giles said, it was in 1997 that he was called to help with the dismantling of the cathedral’s interior.

“I was the repairman for stuff that fell between licensed contractors and basic on-site maintenance people,” he said. “If they had a busted faucet or a broken tile or needed some simple security . . . for 10 years, I was the person they called.”

When the dismantling project was underway, Giles said, he personally supervised a crew that removed all the cathedral’s pews. Many of them were taken to a Korean church, Giles said, while the rest were put into temporary storage in the basement of the Los Angeles Times building.

“About the same time, I was told to dismantle the shrine and to just take all of the steel . . . and stack it,” Giles said. “And that is where [it] sat for a couple of years.”

According to a receipt dated May 1999, Giles’ work assignment at St. Vibiana’s included the following: “Restack woodpile. Clean area. Remove scrap metal and reusable gates.”

In the margin was this entry: “No charge.”

Several months after bringing he gates home, Giles said, he was offered $3,000 for one of them by a neighbor’s friend. But he refused to break up the set.

Then, a month ago, Giles said he decided to put the gates up for auction on the Internet after hearing about developer Tom Gilmore’s plans to turn St. Vibiana’s into a boutique hotel, restaurant and academy for the arts.

If those plans are not inspiring an outcry, Giles said, neither should his. “So,” he said “my soul is resting a little bit lighter.”

Still, Giles said, he is torn about how such a shrine could be dismantled, let alone given away for scrap.

“The shrine was magnificent and the gates are of Buckingham Palace quality,” Giles said. “My God, they are beautiful.”

Said Giles: “I can just imagine a priest saying 100 years ago we want to build a shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe and his people contribute . . . quarters and nickels and dimes.

“And then, years later . . . they just throw the things out.”

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Times librarian John Tyrrell contributed to this story.