Tuesday, October 28, 2008

St. Andrew's Catholic Church ... (PVDP in Pasadena, CA)

This post is inspired by Katney (click on her name to see photos from 1927!) who has family ties to St. Andrew's. Taken on January 26, 2008, while I was in Pasadena for a Society of Women Engineers conference, and decided to visit some of my old haunts in Pasadena and Highland Park (where I lived during my teens). As I drove down Raymond Street, I spotted this beautiful campanile and had to stop to admire.

From Wikipedia: "St. Andrew's Catholic Church ... was founded in the 1880s, it is the oldest Catholic parish in Pasadena and one of the oldest in Los Angeles County. Its Romanesque campanile bell tower is visible for miles and is one of the landmarks of Pasadena. The current church, built in 1927, was modeled after the Basilica of St. Sabina in Rome."
The interior is adorned with mural above the altar and this one in the chapel in the north nave, which were painted from 1930 to 1935 by Carlo Wostry, an accomplished Italian painter from Trieste. What caught my eye were the four saints (in the middle, at ground level), depicted in vivid colors and with golden halos: St. Cecilia, St. Barbara, St. ?, and St. Agnes.

6 comments:

Hilda said...

Love the brick bell tower! And the mural is fascinating too — love its wonderful golden glow.

Anonymous said...

Can you just walk in? I want to see the saints. They appear stylistically contemporary (in a 1930's kind of way)

Anonymous said...

That's lovely - the tower is very Italianate. I like it a lot.

Anonymous said...

Love the new photos and the old. Now on my must-visit list. (I thought I caught a trace of Pasadanish in your accent.)

Rob said...

Nicely done! The clock tower is excellent! I'm also guessing it is a bell tower also.

Greyhound Girl said...

Such a beautiful church. Seems to be a glorious place to find photos.