Wayfarers' Chapel fonds

See digitized items (307)
Print this page

Part of

• Fonds: Wayfarers' Chapel fonds, 1937-1979

People

• Lloyd Wright (creator)

Title

Wayfarers' Chapel fonds

Dates of creation

1937-1979

Form

• archives

Level of archival description

Fonds

Extent and Medium

• 323 drawings (including 42 reprographic copies)
• 205 files (1.7 l.m. of textual records)
• 1 photomechanical print

Scope and Content

The Wayfarers' Chapel fonds contains 323 drawings and reprographic copies and 205 files of textual records (1.7 l.m.). These documents date from 1937 to 1979. The majority of the drawings and all of the files relate to the design and construction of the Wayfarers' Chapel, including conceptual and design development sketches for the chapel (1946-51) and for subsequent additions including a parish house and cloister (1953-59), campanile (1953-56), entrance gate and sign (1954-68), work shed and yard (1957-58), baptismal font (1963-64), audiovisual exhibit (1970-78) and auditorium addition (1970-78).

The fonds also includes material for related unbuilt projects: the Swedenborg Memorial Chapel, Swedenborg Memorial Chapel, El Cerrito, California (1950-62), Snow Chapel, Île Bigras, Laval, Québec (1951), and for an unidentified plan for a structure or structures on a hillside site, possibly for the built Ralph Jester House in Palos Verdes, California (1949-50).

Reference Number

AP151

Biographical notes

LLOYD WRIGHT

Oak Park, Illinois, 1890 - Santa Monica, California, 1978

The eldest son of Frank Lloyd Wright, Lloyd Wright trained as a landscape architect. He worked for his father in the mid-1910s, supervising and helping to design projects in Southern California and then practiced there on his own for the remainder of his career. He designed private residences (Ramon Novarro and the concrete block, Mayan-style Sowden House), two Hollywood Bowls (1927 and 1928) and a series of unbuilt early airports (1928-29). His most famous work is the Wayfarers' Chapel (1951), designed for a local congregation of the Swedenborgian Church on a spectacular cliffside site overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Ranchos Palos Verdes California, south of Los Angeles.

Archivist's note

• The drawings in the Wayfarer's Chapel fonds were catalogued by Karen Fraser in 1994. The textual records were inventoried by Allison J. Colborne in 1990. Howard Shubert and Alexis Lenk prepared the finding aid in 2009.

Related units of description

• For drawings, photographs and textual records in the CCA Collection relating to Lloyd Wright's airport projects: Boeing Airport, Burbank, California (1929), Los Angeles Municipal Airport (1929) and Lehigh Airports Competition (1929), see DR1987:0347-0409; DR1987:0864:001-010; DR1987:0865-0866; DR1989:0001; DR1991:0016.