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California's Mission San Juan Capistrano By Patrick James Reilly |
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The re-building of an historic mission church provides an example of architecture as a pastoral instrument.
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Just why it took a century and a half and more to replace an historic parish church destroyed by earthquake in 1812 is too involved a story to tell here, and not very relevant to ecclesiastical architecture. Lincoln buffs, of course, will want to know that Abraham Lincoln played a role in it by giving the ruins back to the Catholic authorities. What interests us most here is an example of architecture as a pastoral instrument.
The San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, by the Postmodernist master Michael Graves, sits on a knoll at the corner of El Camino Real and Acjachema Street, occupying a curiously rural slice of downtown San Juan Capistrano. A quasi-mannerist interpretation of Spanish Colonial architecture in early Postmodern idiom, it is striking for its diminutive scale, an overgrown architectural model in wood and pastel-painted stucco. It proudly displays the ubiquitous...
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