SLO COUNTY LANDMARKS

Call it the age of Mission retro

It’s a delicate job to repair, restore and retrofit two buildings that are so old and so revered in the county; consider it ‘Saving the Irreplaceable’

By Sally Connell and Leah Etling

TRIBUNE PHOTO BY DAVID MIDDLECAMP

Anthony Crosby, left, and Douglas Porter examine the interior of Mission San Miguel.

Click any image to enlarge.

• Photo gallery of damage at Mission San Miguel, both before and after the San Simeon Earthquake

Mission Prep work means longer summer vacation

The Roman Catholic Church is closing the older portion of Mission Prep this summer for earthquake retrofitting.

The result will be that students at the Catholic high school in San Luis Obispo will get a longer summer, with classes resuming Sept. 10 instead of mid-August.

The project is expected to cost $6 million, although project manager John Fowler said the retrofitting itself will be accomplished for approximately $2 million. He said students will return to school when the seismic strengthening is completed, but that finishing work will be done later.

The brick building was constructed on the site of the old mission-era convent in 1926, local historian Dan Krieger said. It stands at Palm and Broad streets.

A new gymnasium and additional wing were completed in a $9.2 million expansion in 2004.

—Sally Connell

Two iconic San Luis Obispo County landmarks, Mission San Miguel and Mission San Luis Obispo, are at different stages of coping with the most serious threat to large historic adobes in California — earthquakes.

Mission San Miguel, closed because of extensive damage it sustained in the December 2003 San Simeon Earthquake, is seeing visible signs of progress as scaffolding rose around the 40-foot-high building this week.

Workers started removing the exterior white plaster that has covered the mission chapel for nearly 120 years, prompting passers-by to do double takes upon seeing the white mission turning adobe brown. Construction experts are studying the adobe for cracks and other problems.

A banner on the chain-link fence surrounding the church heralds the project with the words, “Saving the Irreplaceable.”

Meanwhile, the church at Mission San Luis Obispo is expected to be closed on weekdays starting next week as a major project to make it safer during earthquakes gets fully under way.

The mission was not damaged in the San Simeon Earthquake, but the city did speed up deadlines for retrofitting after that temblor.

The mission museum and gift shop, where earthquake retrofitting was completed, will remain open during the week.

Weekday Masses will be held at the parish hall through at least November. The plan calls for reopening the church on Saturdays and Sundays for visitors, parishioners and services, according to John Fowler, the project manager for both missions.

San Miguel frescoes

San Miguel was a humble mission, but the frescoes painted inside the tall church are considered by many to be its grandest legacy.

“We do find the murals are in actually very good shape for being 200 years old,” Fowler said.

Though the mission was established in the 1790s, the current church building was constructed about 1820. Histories of the mission state that master Spanish artist Esteban Munras supervised Salinan Indians as they painted the frescoes.

Restoring them is expected to take more than $2 million of the total $16 million the church estimates it will cost to repair, restore, retrofit and update the mission, Fowler said.

It could be two more months, Fowler said, before the church can put any time frame on the total project.

Conservators are evaluating everything from the type of pigment used in the frescoes to how much water damage has been done to the lower outside adobe walls from decades of rain dripping off the roof.

“When we were studying the murals, we found three bullet holes,” he said. “One of them still had a bullet in it.”

He said an archivist will work for the next 60 days to write some kind of definitive history on the frescoes and other characteristics of the mission.

The church has received a $6.25 million insurance settlement that is paying for the start of the project.

One hang-up may be the fact that the rebuilding requires many adobe bricks, which can only be made during the summer.

“We have to go to New Mexico and truck them in,” Fowler said. “They are no longer made in California.”

San Luis Obispo makeover

The effort to hasten retrofitting at Mission San Luis Obispo is also tied to the magnitude- 6.5 San Simeon Earthquake.

After two women were killed in the collapse of a building in Paso Robles during that quake, the San Luis Obispo City Council sped up the time-line for buildings in its historic downtown to be retrofitted to better withstand such temblors.

Earthquake retrofitting is intended to make a building stay standing long enough for people inside to escape to safety in a quake. It can sometimes help save buildings as well.

Starting next week, the church at Mission San Luis Obispo will close from Monday through Friday to allow for retrofitting work, with the weekday closures expected through Nov. 1. Fowler said the construction site will be cleaned on Fridays and reopened Saturdays and Sundays.

As with San Miguel, the plan calls for removing the old roof tiles, trying to save as many as possible, creating a new roof base, and putting the old and some replacement tiles back on, Fowler said.

The roof will be more safely secured to the walls, as will the walls to the foundation.

Local historian Dan Krieger supervised the transfer of artworks out of the mission Friday to other locations in the mission compound. He said the crucifix over the altar and two statues at its sides will remain but will be shrouded during construction activities.

Unlike in San Miguel, the paintings on San Luis Obispo’s walls are not from the mission era.

“Virtually all of the original painting was badly damaged by the March 1920 fire,” Krieger said.

The church has received city permission to remove the floss silk tree at the top of the steps. That is expected to happen midsummer.

Total cost of the project is about $2.775 million, Fowler said, but support has come from far beyond the Catholic and parish community.

“When we put the capital campaign together on the mission, it really was a who’s who of San Luis Obispo,” Fowler said.

San Luis Obispo Chamber of Commerce President Dave Garth said the mission is important as a church, a monument and a tourist attraction.

“As the Jewish boy on the block, I think it’s the most important building in San Luis Obispo,” he said. “We can’t think short-term. If this is what is necessary to save it for future generations, this is what has to be done.”