Landslide Acceleration: The ground beneath the chapel has started moving at an unprecedented rate of over 2 feet per month, leading to significant structural damage.
Dismantling for Preservation: Due to the rapid deterioration, crews are disassembling the chapel to preserve original materials for potential rebuilding. The location, if stabilized, might host the chapel again; otherwise, a new nearby location will be considered.
Historical Significance: Opened in 1951, the chapel is a celebrated example of “organic architecture” and was declared a National Historic Landmark in December 2023. It’s also a popular site for movies and weddings.
Reconstruction Challenges: The estimated reconstruction time is four years with a cost of at least $20 million, excluding the price of new land in an expensive area.
Community Impact: The chapel is a significant cultural and spiritual site, hosting services for followers of the Swedenborgian denomination and welcoming visitors of all faiths for spiritual experiences with nature.
The Associated Press has the story:
Landslide forces closure of iconic S. California chapel designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s son
The earth beneath the chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes is moving an unprecedented 2 feet (61 centimeters) or more each month. Intended to celebrate the natural world, the chapel is instead being destroyed by it.
“It’s actually dangerous to even walk on the grounds now because everything is breaking,” the Rev. Dan Burchett, the chapel’s executive director, told The Associated Press on Thursday. “Nature, in one sense, is showing her power.”
“The transparency of the glass would usher you into a place of nature that the structure would disappear in,” said Burchett, who has also been a chapel officiant since 2000.
An attractive location for movies and weddings, the cliffside spot on the Palos Verdes Peninsula has also contributed to its downfall. The chapel was designated as a National Historic Landmark in December 2023 but closed just two months later, according to the chapel’s website, from the worsening effects of the 1956 Portuguese Bend landslide, part of a larger ancient landslide complex in the area.
The damage includes a long crack in the 1949 cornerstone, a buckling asphalt parking lot and fractured 15-foot- (4.6-meter-) tall glass panels, as well as torqued metal framing in the chapel’s ceiling and walls.
Crews raced to disassemble the chapel this week so the original materials — many of which cannot be replicated — can be preserved and used to rebuild, either at the current site if it can be stabilized or somewhere else nearby.
“These are hard days; these are days to grieve, no doubt,” Burchett said. “But we will celebrate again, we are sure of that.”
Part of the Swedenborgian denomination, the church’s followers share in 18th century Swedish scientist and theologian Emanuel Swedenborg’s “quest for a religion that interconnects all of life, and for a system that allows reasoned questioning of life’s deepest religious issues,” the chapel’s website says.
The chapel also served as a national monument to Swedenborg, and hosted regular worship services for wayfarers — “all who come, no matter their faith or status” — until the landslide forced them to relocate to a nearby Episcopal church earlier this year.
“We don’t exclude anyone, even if the person says they’re an atheist and they don’t believe in God but they want to join with nature and have some spiritual experience, they are welcome to do that with the chapel,” Burchett said.
It’s also hosted many real-life celebrity weddings. Brian Wilson, the Beach Boys founder who composed hit song “Good Vibrations,” married his wife, Melinda, there in 1995.
“The vibrations in that chapel were so wonderful,” Wilson reportedly said.