Every day, landslide damage at the historic Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes worsens.
More windows of the famous glass chapel shatter. The metal structure along its walls and ceiling is tightened even more. New cracks open in the parking lot.
The landslide beneath the chapel, mostly manageable for decades before, has accelerated at an unprecedented rate, likely quashing the possibility of a future for the chapel in its idyllic seaside site.
Chapel leaders announced Monday their plans to begin dismantling the chapel. The hope, they said, is to preserve what they can of the national historic landmark, ancient spiritual shrine and well-known wedding venue.
“We are taking immediate steps to carefully dismantle the chapel's historic materials as a necessary step in preserving the chapel for generations to come,” Dan Burchett, executive director of Wayfarers Chapel, said in a statement. “Wayfarers is committed to preserving our iconic chapel exactly as it has always been, whether at the current site or at a similar site nearby in Rancho Palos Verdes.”
Burchett and his team have been searching for another location nearby, on more stable ground, where the chapel could be rebuilt as close to its original form as possible. He said they would also continue to monitor the landslide to see if the chapel could be reassembled on site, but that continues to look less feasible with each passing day as the earthworks have intensified.
In February, Wayfarers closed its doors, concerned about safety due to the landslide. Last month, city officials red-tagged the administration building not far from Wayfarers Chapel, and as of Monday, all underground utilities at the site, including electricity, water, sewer and gas, were broken and were unusable, officials said.
The 100-seat glass and wood sanctuary was built in 1951, designed by architect Lloyd Wright, son of famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
The disassembly, carried out by preservation design firm Architectural Resources Group, will be a tedious process, Burchett said. This week, the team is preparing the property for the full-scale project and Burchett expected work to begin next week.
“The chapel will not be able to withstand much more damage before it becomes impossible to preserve,” Wayfarers officials said in a news release. “Immediate deconstruction of the chapel has been determined to be the safest and most feasible preservation action to take at this time and will prevent further irreparable damage to the structure and materials of the chapel.”
Many of the chapel's building materials are no longer available, Burchett said, so deconstruction allows the structure to maintain its historic designation and paves the way for “a careful and thoughtful future reconstruction of the chapel.”
“With each passing day, more of this material is lost or damaged beyond repair,” said Katie Horak, director of Architectural Resources Group. With deconstruction beginning, “our team is working around the clock to document and move these building components to a safe location so they can be reassembled.”
He said some of the irreplaceable pieces included old redwood laminated wood (or glued laminated wood), blue shingles and the fancy steel mesh that holds the windows together.
The city's latest report on the historic landslide complex, which affects about 700 acres on both sides of Palos Verdes Drive South in Rancho Palos Verdes, found that land movement in March and April had accelerated even further, almost twice the movement recorded from January to March. – when leaders were already sounding the alarm about the situation. In some of the fastest-moving areas, the hillside was moving up to nine inches a week, the city geologist found.
“Wayfarers Chapel has been a treasured part of our community for generations,” Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank said in a statement. “The city… is committed to working with Wayfarers Chapel to ensure that it can be quickly rebuilt in a geologically safe location somewhere within the city, if possible.”
Burchett said the deconstruction and closure of the campus is estimated to cost between $300,000 and $500,000, much more than the nearly $70,000 raised through an online fundraiser that was started after the chapel had to close and cease most of its operations.
The complete reconstruction is estimated to cost about $20 million, Burchett said.
The nonprofit has about $5 million in savings set aside for that effort, revenue primarily from on-site weddings. Couples would pay more than $5,000 to get married in the highly sought-after, Instagram-famous chapel.
Burchett, however, said Wayfarers would still need more community support and is planning a fundraising campaign for the rest.
