The altar that held the prayers, hopes and dreams of Angelenos for more than 100 years is gone. So, too, are the pews that seated city pioneers, laborers, business executives and even a president.
But the vaulted ceiling, with its Corinthian-style columns -- painted to look like marble -- has been retrofitted and restored. Ornate stencils line the building.
After being closed for years, the carved wooden doors of Los Angeles' original cathedral are again open.
From its perch at the corner of 2nd and Main streets downtown, St. Vibiana's Cathedral has witnessed majesty and despair, care and neglect, earthquakes, court orders and the burgeoning of Los Angeles from a sleepy pueblo into a bustling metropolis.
Built in 1876 -- when 10% of the city's nearly 10,000 inhabitants could fit inside its nave -- the Spanish-Baroque structure was once the city's primary Catholic church, the home of its archbishop and the headquarters of the region's Catholic community.
But after it was severely damaged in the 1994 Northridge quake, the cathedral became the center of an epic preservation battle that marked a beginning to the revitalization of the district. The Los Angeles Archdiocese fought to raze the building and build a new cathedral on the site; when preservationists blocked it at every turn, it was decided to abandon the church altogether in favor of building a new one on a site several blocks away.
Now, the former cathedral is about to begin a second act, as Vibiana Place -- a community center at the heart of downtown's revitalization. After three years of public battles and six years of planning and renovation, the newly retrofitted and restored building will be unveiled this evening at a gala, $350-a-head fundraiser for the Los Angeles Conservancy, the preservation group that mounted the fierce campaign to save it.
Making the former cathedral into an arts center, said Tom Gilmore, the developer who bought St. Vibiana's in 1999, has been a lesson in "extreme preservation."
"Initially, the challenge was getting the archdiocese not to tear it down, but to sell it," Gilmore said. "Then, it was to come up with an economically viable plan. Then it was working with the state and other agencies to convince them that this was an asset worth saving. And then it got hard."
A worker was still painting part of the ceiling in preparation for the gala as Gilmore and conservancy Executive Director Linda Dishman gave a tour of the site. And two other men were installing a brass railing on the balcony that overlooks the former nave.
