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Contents © 1997
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

One of San Diego's Masterpieces

AS THOUGH ONE'S SOUL HAD ALWAYS BEEN AT HOME

The recently remodeled church of Saint Mary Magdalene, in the pretty neighborhood of Bay Park, must now be accounted one of San Diego's masterpieces of Catholic church architecture and design. Both within and without, it dazzles the eye and spirit with its harmonious integration of beautifully crafted elements. All these elements -- tower, porch, entrance hall, basilica floorplan, recessed chancel, stained-glass windows -- are traditional, but all are renewed and given an original flavor. Every detail is unexpected, yet the overall impression is of rightness, as though one's soul had always been at home in this new house of worship.

The exterior transforms the familiar shape of the Mexican-style parish church, with its broad, gabled facade and adjacent multi-storied tower. Here, the style of the tower is -- of all things -- Art Deco. Its unadorned top levels present an array of angled walls, buttresses, and turrets rising to a small cupola surmounted by a cross. The cupola and cross are made of patinaed copper, a material that is carried over to the roof of the main facade, and to the broad, conical canopy covering the semicircular entrance porch. The tall, narrow glass doors curving around the porch are framed in a darker green wood. Tower and facade are further unified by a circular stained-glass window in the middle of each, and two square stained-glass windows flanking the porch, one in the facade and the other in the tower.

The porch leads into a long, oval narthex, its framed wooden ceiling articulated with fanning beams. A double pair of gray stone Doric columns, set at angles, lead the eye and the foot into the sanctuary. There, a major surprise: The copper canopied semi-circular porch is repeated inside the church, on the sanctuary's rear wall. On each side of it, a blank quarter-circle of masonry extends from the corner, capped by another fanning roof of the ubiquitous green copper. The effect is amazing, as though we were both inside and outside at once.

The interior porch introduces several additional motifs, which will be repeated in various ways throughout the building's interior. The canopy is held up by a series of strong square columns in brown wood, each with a flat wooden capital about halfway up its length. Somewhat higher, the columns are joined by curved semi-walls composed of narrow wooden planks. Above the canopy, an arch in the interior wall opens into a large, deep loft -- formerly the choir loft -- through which the circular stained-glass window of the facade is visible.

The distinctive shape of this wood-framed, pointed arch dominates the sanctuary. With the straight lines of its vertical sides and of its triangular-pediment apex connected by abrupt, elegant curves, the arch is reminiscent of late English Gothic, reinterpreted by the sensibility of the American Craftsman style. It is repeated throughout the interior, in large dimensions and small. The wooden walls and ceiling of the whole interior are joined in this shape -- the curve, in particular, looking spectacular on such a large scale. A technical feat, carried out with great skill, it gives the church the appearance of an immense piece of Craftsman cabinetry.

The narrow planks reappear (this time disposed horizontally) as the basic fabric of the ceiling. At intervals, they are held in place by huge, brown, wooden beams, curving up to the ridge line; and these are supported, along the white plaster wall below, by the same square columns with flat wooden capitals which we first encountered in the internal porch. In each bay, a rectangular stained-glass window is set in a niche, deeply recessed at the top because of the wall's inward curve, and framed above by the building's characteristic arch.

The shape (along with its dark-brown frame) reappears in the giant proscenium arch that opens on the large, deep chancel. Smaller versions of it flank the proscenium, housing images of Our Lady and Our Lord. Within the chancel, the form is repeated on a large scale in a pair of arches along the receding wall on each side, and on a small scale in adjacent niches. An arch-shaped central area, extending to the very end of the church and rising to the roof's peak, encloses a majestic architectural complex of its own, with a rising succession of structural layers from front to back. First, there is the open, table-like altar of polished stone. Behind it stand the three thrones. Behind them, a tri-partite brown wooden screen displays the pervasive arch outline, with three white lozenge shapes (perhaps an abstract representation of the Holy Trinity) centrally placed in a criss-cross pattern of thin slats. Even farther behind, a higher, broader, rectangular screen of marble supports the arched wooden frame of the church's largest stained-glass window.

The integrated design extends even to the lighting fixtures. Thoroughly Craftsman in their structure and their use of materials, they reiterate the patinaed copper motif and complement it with handsome alabaster bowls, both in the lamps hanging from the ceiling and in the shapely sconces along the side walls. The stained-glass program, too, is highly organized. It focuses not on Mary Magdalene, but on Our Lord's Passion. The superb window above and behind the altar depicts in intense forms and colors an unusual iconographic subject: Our Lord arriving at Golgotha, where the two thieves are already crucified, and spreading His arms in humble acceptance of the sacrifice he is about to make. The circular window in the facade shows the Agony in the Garden, with the same doctrinal and emotional emphasis. The windows along the walls constitute the Stations of the Cross; and the small square windows of the front of the church represent Our Lord's Passion in symbolic terms: the Lamb of God, and the Eucharist.

The combination of grandeur and exquisiteness of detail in Saint Mary Magdalene finds an echo in the magnificent panoramic view west across the church's parking lot: Mission Bay, the Pacific Ocean, a large part of San Diego's seaside landscape, and the vast heavens above. *

Saint Mary Magdalene
1945 Illion Street
Bay Park