A Secular Life for St. Vibiana’s

St. Vibiana’s sits at the corner of 2nd and Main streets like an old dowager who’s given up on appearances. Chunks of fallen plaster expose the brick underneath. Paint peels in great curls, and where magnificent stained-glass windows once hung, gaping holes are messily covered with plywood and plastic.

Its surrounding buildings are in varied degrees of disrepair. The cupola from the abandoned cathedral’s bell tower rests on its side in a corner of the parking lot next to a stone cross; a stuffed toy lies abandoned in the courtyard.

But the former cathedral’s 126-year-old bones are still good, and the history it is steeped in so powerful that the structure is getting a second chance at life, not as a church, but as the center of a multipurpose project. Its developers hope the complex will again be a heartbeat for the city.

The cathedral is to be converted into a performing-arts center, with Cal State L.A. as its main tenant; the nonprofit St. Vibiana’s Arts Project, which secured funding for the renovation, will help steer its future. The multistory school building behind it will be torn down to make way for a new Little Tokyo branch library. The old rectory, built in 1933, will remain, possibly becoming space for continuing-education classes for Cal State--although much work would be needed to turn its tiny rooms into classrooms.

A restaurant may be built on some of the garden space adjoining the rectory. On the other side of the church, toward 3rd Street, there would be new housing and parking structures.

It is a dramatic turn of fortunes for St. Vibiana’s. After being heavily damaged in the 1994 Northridge quake, it came perilously close to being demolished two years later by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, which had made the decision to build a new cathedral on the site. Eventually, the archdiocese chose a site eight blocks away; St. Vibiana’s successor, the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, is set to open next month.

Though the old church has been gutted of pews and lighting fixtures, such treasures as colorful decorative painting, mosaics and tiles remain. The marble altar needs polishing but remains impressive, even in the dim light punctuated by slivers of sunshine that shoot through the boarded-up windows.

L.A.-based developer Tom Gilmore of Gilmore Associates, who has orchestrated a number of downtown renovation projects, bought the property in 1999 and has been formulating plans for it. He says work will begin this fall on the $5.5-million renovation of the church, including seismic repairs and restoring the cupola, using money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, other federal sources and state funds.

Gilmore estimates the cost of the rest of his proposed development at $38 million: $30 million for construction of new housing and parking space, and $8 million for the rectory renovation and restaurant. Gilmore says he’ll be “hunting around for funding” for those projects in the next six to 10 months.

Redevelopment of Block

Could Spur Renaissance

The redevelopment of the block--bordered by 2nd, 3rd, Main and Los Angeles streets--is among several projects in the immediate area that, taken together, are seen as fueling a renaissance for a skid row-adjacent area that has languished for years.

Facing St. Vibiana’s across 2nd Street is the new California Department of Transportation building, designed by the Santa Monica-based firm Morphosis and under construction; facing it across Main Street is the 10-story Higgins Building, a 91-year-old office building vacant since the late 1970s that’s being converted into lofts.

After completion of the Caltrans building, the old site--kittycorner from St. Vibiana’s--is being considered for conversion into a large public plaza to be called Civic Square.

Other neighbors in the vicinity include the Los Angeles Music Center, Frank Gehry’s new Walt Disney Concert Hall, the newly renovated City Hall, the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Geffen Contemporary and the proposed site of the new Los Angeles Children’s Museum. And just recently the Los Angeles Unified School District approved plans to build a visual and performing-arts high school at 450 N. Grand Ave., the former site of LAUSD headquarters. The school, which is to include a theater, rehearsal rooms and dance studios, is scheduled to open in September 2005.

Gilmore, who paid $4.6 million for the church and the block it sits on, is hopeful that St. Vibiana’s will regain the spirit it had when its doors opened in 1876. “It was the center of where everybody met in L.A., and now it will be that in a whole different way,” he says.

Gilmore, a former altar boy who is no longer affiliated with the church, says spirituality had nothing to do with this purchase. The downtown-centric developer, whose other properties include the 91-year-old Palace Theatre at Broadway and 6th Street, liked the idea of having another viable area around the Old Bank District along Spring and Main streets, where he has turned several old buildings into residential lofts.

But he makes it clear that St. Vibiana’s is more than just another architectural conquest.

“I’m most proud of it out of everything we’re doing,” he says. “In its day, St. Vibiana’s was the heart, the absolute epicenter of the city, and that the city could possibly be new again without first addressing the heart of it doesn’t make sense to me. There’s a certain poetry to renewing this. It’s very special.”

Gilmore says St. Vibiana’s multiuse approach “speaks to our whole philosophy on how to revitalize cities. Part of it is education, part of it is culture, part of it is entertainment, and most of it is housing. This plan really speaks to all of that, without it being too much of a buffet in terms of urban planning.” Still, he concedes that the affordable and market-rate housing that are part of the plan won’t be family-friendly in the beginning. Their appeal will likely be stronger for urban pioneers--singles and childless couples.

“I think the first five to 10 years are really about young people,” he says. “But ultimately, as they begin to age and the city matures, then you’ll find things like schools, day-care centers, parks and all the things that feed family life. I hope we’re making a little bit of a dent with this project, and I think the rest will happen.”

Gilmore says he always thought the cathedral would be best suited for the arts, even after he reviewed proposals that included turning the quake-damaged building into an interfaith chapel, an ethnic museum, housing for seniors or a hotel banquet hall.

Attending arts performances is “how people gather,” he explains. “Depending on how you look at religion, the cathedral was always a performing arts center. All I’m doing is making it secular.”

When people first gathered at St. Vibiana’s, it was to pray.

The building was constructed at a cost of $80,000 on land that had been donated by city patron Amiel Cavallier. The Spanish baroque-style cathedral designed by architect Ezra Kysor took 17 years from project approval to completion, and when it was finished it became a focal point for Angelenos in the 19th century. Pope Pius IX named the church after a little-known 3rd century martyr; relics of the saint interred at St. Vibiana’s have been moved to the new cathedral.

Yet the cathedral wasn’t immune even then from physical changes or the whims of various church officials. Almost 20 years after it was built, its interior was augmented with Mexican onyx and Italian Carrara marble, frosted lighting fixtures and a stained-glass window.

Two bishops, one in 1907 and another in 1922, attempted to build new churches, leaving St. Vibiana’s future in doubt. Neither project got off the ground, but the cathedral did get a face lift in 1924, changing the exterior to a more Roman design, which remains today.

A school was added in 1940, but closed in 1960. And as downtown L.A. began to lose its vibrancy, so did St. Vibiana’s. Daily Masses, Sunday services and other events continued at the cathedral but parishioners began to taper off as the population spread to other parts of the city and the suburbs.

Still, it remained an important part of the Catholic community; Pope John Paul II stayed there in 1987, and President Bill Clinton visited in 1995. The rectory was home to Bishop Timothy Manning and Cardinal Roger M. Mahony.

Msgr. Kevin Kostelnik lived at St. Vibiana’s from 1989 to 2001 and considered it “a nice oasis for people when the area was somewhat of a wasteland. It was amazing in the midst of the city to go into the cathedral and pray, and hear the noise outside, and this was a reminder of a peaceful calm that you couldn’t always find in the streets.”

Although Kostelnik, now at the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, says the old church “wasn’t a really active place,” daily Masses drew local businesspeople, and Sunday Masses attracted a few hundred downtown residents and others who were dedicated to St. Vibiana’s. About five priests and eight nuns lived on the grounds.

After the earthquake, the cathedral’s fate hinged on a highly publicized tug of war between the archdiocese, which wanted to reduce the building to rubble to build a new one for about $50 million on the site, and preservationists who wanted to save the old building.

The Cathedral Gets

an 11th-Hour Reprieve

The Los Angeles Conservancy went nose to nose for years with the archdiocese and the city, filing lawsuits and challenging decisions designed to hasten the cathedral’s demise. One of the more dramatic moments in the fight came in 1996 when a crane hired by the archdiocese pulled the cross and cupola from the bell tower. In an 11th-hour stay, a city building inspector ruled that the proper permits weren’t in place, halting the demolition.

The conservancy eventually won its suits. The archdiocese chose another downtown location just off the Hollywood Freeway for its new cathedral, spending $10.85 million for the land and about $200 million more for the building. Where St. Vibiana held 1,200 people, the new cathedral can seat 3,000.

In the coming year, transformation of the St. Vibiana’s block will begin. The final phase, expected to start in about a year, will be construction of the parking structures and apartment buildings, which will feature 300 loft-like units; an architect for that part of the project has not been named. Work on the library and renovation of the cathedral and rectory get underway this fall.

The 12,500-square-foot public library branch will replace a much smaller one a few blocks away in Little Tokyo. The one-story building, designed by Los Angeles architect Tony Lumsden, makes use of available light via windows and skylights and includes interior gardens. The design references Frank Lloyd Wright, Rudolf Schindler and Japanese architecture, with an interior that focuses on “volume, light and views of the garden,” according to Lumsden. The city, which bought that part of the property from Gilmore, is building the library.

Renovation of the cathedral will be managed by architect Brenda Levin of L.A.-based Levin & Associates Architects, best known for her restoration work on such landmarks as Los Angeles City Hall and the Bradbury Building. Levin says she relishes the challenge of bestowing a different identity onto St. Vibiana’s.

“We want to recognize the structure but then be transformed by what occurs in there,” she says. “You don’t want to have a religious experience--well, you might want to--but you’re not trying to evoke the same mystery that a spiritual place like a cathedral is trying to.”

Seismic, Other Repairs

to Halt Further Damage

Seismic repairs and other work will bring the building up to code and forestall further damage. The repairs include returning the cupola to its home, using reinforced concrete on a new foundation to strengthen the tower, repairing and replacing various roofs with plywood, metal and trusses to help stabilize the building, and patching plaster on walls. The decision on whether to replace the bell--which was moved to the new cathedral--remains up in the air.

Inside the building, in addition to the altar, some confessionals have been left behind. “I’m thinking how to reuse those,” says Levin of the confessionals, “in terms of what kinds of opportunities actors might have. I think our position is to sort of leave the church very much intact. It’s a pretty good space as it is. After we clean it up and restore it, we have to deal with urban design issues, such as how to enter the building, how to incorporate the exterior areas, and then plan to accommodate very flexible use.”

Levin adds that a team of electrical and other technical consultants, including specialists in theater design and acoustics, is in place to start planning those parts of the project.

Cal State L.A. will occupy the cathedral about 150 days of the year, according to Gilmore, with other groups performing between its productions (in June the Cornerstone Theatre Company performed “Crossings,” updated Bible stories about Catholic immigrants’ journeys to Southern California, in various parts of the complex). Cal State’s arts students had performed at St. Vibiana’s pre-earthquake, as well as at other off-campus venues, but this will be its first permanent off-campus site to be used for recitals and lectures, theatrical, dance and musical performances, some done as collaborations with other groups.

Gilmore says he envisions the performances at St. Vibiana’s as “everybody’s performances. We’re not going to charge $60 a seat, but $6.”

Carl Selkin, dean of Cal State L.A.’s College of Arts and Letters, says St. Vibiana’s will be “a wonderful component that’s part of assembling a critical mass of cultural facilities and programs in downtown, including Disney Hall. There’s an attraction to the building for so many people whose lives have been centered around it.”

Despite being gutted of fixtures and in need of extensive work, Selkin calls the space “wonderful” and adds, “Theater is historically tied into sacred spaces, developed out of rituals that had spiritual significance. It brought communities together, and I think this continues that tradition. It’s still a spiritual place.”