December 2018—Pasadena, California

I’ve always been a New York guy, even having been born in the Central Valley. My most vivid memories of L.A. consist of driving through the city at midnight in route to my grandparents’ house in Vista. Sometimes my father would turn on a avant-guard jazz station which, along with the streetlight tracers, turned the two-hour journey from Santa Clarity to Mission Viejo into a dream state.

In December, I returned to Southern California.

Like most of us, I am irritated traffic so I tried an experiment: This trip a would be done only via public transportation. In retrospect, it wasn’t so much a tactical mistake but a series of missed opportunities. During four days, I only shot four churches: La Verne, Sierra Madre, 1st UMC of San Gabriel, and Claremont.

La Verne UMC is most famous for serving as the set for the final scene in The Graduate where Ben Braddock runs away with Elaine Robinson, leaving her husband-to-be at the altar. The building and environs has changed so little, it seems stuck in time. Aside from the Christmas wreathes on the doors I could imagine Dustin Hoffman and Katherine Ross running towards a waiting city bus on D street.

The timing of my Claremont visit off and proved to be the biggest scheduling error. Midcentury superstar Richard Neutra designed Claremont in 1959 and based on interior images I had anticipated it to be one of the most exciting stops on the trip. It is, however, that impressive on the outside and since the doors were locked, I had no access to his great, asymmetrically designed sanctuary. The outside shared more characteristics with a one-story suburban rancher than a house of worship. Claremont deserves as second visit once the Christmas decorations come down.

1st UMC of San Gabriel was one of many mid-century construction hybrids, using the a-frame sanctuary model but with a smart exterior of random rubble-style masonry. San Gabriel was closed as well so I’m not sure to what extent the mid-century interior has been preserved. The best vantage point to shoot was across the four-lane North San Gabriel Boulevard but almost every shot I took had a car in the middle of the frame. Out of a 100 or so shots I only had 2 or 3 that worked.

On Sunday, I sauntered up the gentle slope of the San Gabriel Mountains, 40 minutes north of clogged I-240 to visit Sierra Madre UMC. Situated across from the similarly named Sierra Donuts, Sierra Madre served as a classic example of the A-frame used so frequently during the expansion of Pasadena in the 1940s. Reverend Sangman Shin took me on a tour of the facilities while the parishioners seemed vaguely curious about my project. Curious enough to invite me for a cup of coffee and cake, but not so much as to ask why I was taking pictures of the kitchen stove. The most compelling element of Sierra Madre was the clean, period specific font used on the berm signage. Like the old Department of Pasadena Department of Public Works font, its symmetry and grace seem timeless.