History of St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park
History of St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park
Dedicated as “a place of great hospitality and service,” the campus of St. Paul’s Commons, Echo Park, was opened October 22, 1994 as headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and home to outreach ministries including those of St. Athanasius Church – a congregation dating from 1864 as Southern California’s oldest continuous Protestant house of worship.
With its on-site retreat center and lakeview meeting rooms, St. Paul’s Commons provides welcoming space in which to deepen faith, build community, and serve neighbors in need.
Joining with interfaith and civic partners, St. Paul’s Commons is a nexus for collaboration in common cause rooted in 160 years of Los Angeles history.
Buit and dedicated as the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, the Echo Park campus in 2019 was renamed St. Paul’s Commons to distinguish its ministries from those of downtown’s St. John’s Cathedral, so designated in 2007.
St. Paul’s Commons continues the legacy of a congregation that began as L.A.’s first Episcopal parish, grew to become its first cathedral, and continues in neighborhood and regional outreach.
Beginnings: 1864-1883
The parish formally organized in 1865 as St. Athanasius Episcopal Church, Los Angeles, held its first Sunday service on Christmas Eve morning in 1864, led by the Rev. Elias Birdsall, who was deployed to the Pueblo by Bishop William Ingraham Kip, leader of the then-statewide Diocese of California. Mr. Birdsall quickly earned the respect of Angelenos in his dual work as city schools’ superintendent and for the local funeral oration he delivered following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln. In 1865, St. Athanasius launched services in a red-brick church built – originally for Presbyterians – at Temple and New High streets by the Protestant Society. In 1872, concurrent with the parish’s incorporation, Bishop Kip presented St. Athanasius a 35-acre parcel of land bordered by Figueroa, Sixth, and Seventh streets and reaching west to the vicinity of Good Samaritan Hospital. Regrettably, portions of the land were sold off gradually to meet expenses, including some worsened by the economic depression of the 1890s.
New church named St. Paul’s: 1883-1922
Seeking to accommodate a growing parish, the vestry of St. Athanasius decided to build a larger, Carpenter Gothic wooden church at 523 S. Olive Street, on a site now occupied by the Four Seasons Biltmore Hotel. Across the street from today’s Pershing Square (then Central Park) the church opened for Christmas services in 1883 under the name of St. Paul’s.
Not all parishioners favored the relocation, and in the 1890s some reclaimed the name St. Athanasius and organized a new parish on Custer Avenue in the Temple-Beaudry neighborhood, also serving residents of fashionable Angelino Heights.
St. Paul’s Church was the site of the 1895-1896 organizing conventions of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the election of its first bishop, the Rt. Rev. Joseph Horsfall Johnson, who named St. Paul’s the diocese’s pro-cathedral in 1899. In the 1880s, the parish expanded its community ministries and for a period of years owned St. Paul’s Hospital later renamed Good Samaritan.
The new church became home to a significant 1911 Murray Harris pipe organ (now serving St. James’ Church, Wilshire Center), and in 1917 welcomed U.S. President and Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, visiting L.A. to promote the work of the League of Nations.
St. Athanasius by-the-Lake: 1917-1992
Continuing nearby, the Temple-Beaudry Parish of St. Athanasius in received the gift of lots across from Echo Park Lake, once a reservoir and the centerpiece of the city’s first public park, established in 1890. The vestry approved a 1917 plan to move the Custer Avenue church to 840 Echo Park Avenue, the present site of St. Paul’s Commons. The relocation involved sawing the Craftsman-style wooden church in half and transporting it via flatbed truck – a scene that prompted the L.A. Times to quip: “This was the first time many Angelenos have seen the inside of a church.” The lakeview site provided a scenic setting for the reconfigured 1902 church originally designed by architect Arthur Benton – whose works include the 1913 Church of the Epiphany, Lincoln Heights, and Riverside’s Mission Inn.
St. Paul’s Cathedral: 1924-1980
With the pro-cathedral congregation again in need of a larger church, the vestry negotiated a contract with Biltmore Hotel developers which made possible construction of the Mediterranean-style St. Paul’s Cathedral at 615 Figueroa Street just north of Wilshire Boulevard, dedicated in November 1924.
The firm of renowned architect Reginald Johnson – son of Bishop Johnson – designed the new cathedral among other landmark structures including the present 1923 All Saints Church in Pasadena, the 1927 expansion of Good Samaritan Hospital, the Santa Barbara Biltmore, and La Jolla’s La Valencia Hotel. Meanwhile, in this same timeframe, St. John’s Episcopal Church (now pro-cathedral) – designed in the Romanesque style by brother architects Walter and Francis Pierpont Davis – was built at 514 W. Adams Blvd. and opened in December 1924, the month after St. Paul’s Cathedral was dedicated.
St. Paul’s Cathedral was the location for annual meetings of Diocesan Convention and the ordinations to the episcopate of Bishops W. Bertrand Stevens, Robert B. Gooden, Donald J. Campbell, Ivol I. Curtis, and Robert C. Rusack.
Ministries of St. Paul’s Cathedral continued on Figueroa Street until 1979 at which time Diocesan Convention authorized sale of the property citing structural damage in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake and declining downtown population due to suburban growth. The site was sold for $4 million to Mitsui bank, and the cathedral was demolished to make way for the present Price Waterhouse Coopers tower built in 1988-1990 followed by the Korean Air tower opened in 2017 across the street. The cathedral’s Murray Harris organ, altar furnishings, windows and other appointments were removed and stored under supervision of warden Randolph Kimmler, and the congregation began worshiping in Good Samaritan Hospital’s All Souls Chapel, built as a scale replica of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Cathedral Without Walls: 1980-1994
Proceeds of the cathedral sale were invested and dividends funded a series of Cathedral Grants for which qualifying ministries applied. A study was conducted to determine the feasibility of a pro-cathedral being designated at various sites, including L.A. churches St. John’s and St. James. Following the death of Bishop Rusack in 1986, the Diocesan House office building at 1220 W. Fourth St. was sold, leaving the incoming bishop, Frederick H. Borsch, elected in 1988, without offices, a cathedral, or an episcopal residence. Thereafter, a proposal by the Rev. J. Jon Bruno – then rector of St. Athanasius and later bishop diocesan from 2002-2017 – to develop the Echo Park property as a new diocesan center was approved by the diocese’s corporate bodies and city officials.
A Congregation Reunited: 1991 Forward
In 1989, clergy and lay leaders of the respective congregations of St. Athanasius and St. Paul’s Cathedral acted to reunite the two parishes as one, worshiping in the Echo Park church with community ministries growing to include outreach to those living with HIV/AIDS and their caregivers. The vestry of St. Athanasius endorsed the plan to build the new diocesan center and deeded the parish’s Echo Park property to the diocese for this use. When Bishop Borsch received the Cathedral Corporation’s agreement to apply its assets to the project, the building was renamed the Cathedral Center of St. Paul at his suggestion. After extensive study envisioning moving the deteriorating St. Athanasius Church to an adjacent hillside lot, the decision was reached that such an effort was not financially feasible, and the buildings were taken down, their furnishings and artifacts stored for use in the emerging Cathedral Center.
Making All Things New: 1992-present
Ground was broken for the Cathedral Center on October 22, 1992. Under the theme “Grounds for Joy,” this celebration featured representatives of all congregations of the diocese – then numbering 148 across five and one-quarter counties – mixing containers of earth brought from their church sites into the graded lot. Generous gifts to the new building were made by many congregations, including Church of Our Saviour, San Gabriel, which gave the retreat center. During construction of the campus, the congregation worshiped in temporary space provided by the El Centro del Pueblo community organization.
The committee for the Cathedral Center was co-chaired by Ann Lucas of St. Matthew’s, Pacific Palisades, and the Rev. Don Lewis of St. Edmund’s, San Marino. Construction and development was guided by Kristi Wallace of All Saints, Pasadena, who was named executive director of the Cathedral Center Corporation.
Designed by architect John Gougeon, the Echo Park complex included the diocesan offices, the Episcopal Community Federal Credit Union, a bookstore, a weekly food distribution program, an alternative high school, and the central church in which services were conducted in English, Korean, and Spanish. Bishop Borsch gave saints’ names to various rooms, often with significance related to function of the respective space.
The theme for the campus dedication on October 22, 1994 was the scriptural concept, “Making All Things New.”
The church interior was graced with furnishings from the 1924 St. Paul’s Cathedral, including the baptismal font, the cathedra featuring early church scenes carved by a lead actor in Germany’s Oberammergau passion play, and the ambo crafted with an image of the prophet Jeremiah from the cathedral’s pulpit, a gift in memory of Arthur Letts, founder of Bullock’s department stores. The Lazarus Chapel was later updated with a columbarium, and a Von Beckerath pipe organ was added to the sanctuary.
Social ministry and advocacy initiatives were strengthened by events and support based at the Echo Park campus. The first public event following the center’s dedication was a news conference of interfaith leaders opposing Proposition 187 and its restrictions of immigrants. Similar news events were held around subsequent measures, including the HHH L.A. housing initiative, and opposing Proposition 8 limitations of marriage equality.
From 1998 until his death in 2014, the Rev. Canon Malcolm Boyd – best-selling author and former Hollywood producer — served as writer-in-residence of the diocese, with an office in the retreat center. Retreat guests have included two archbishops of Canterbury and four presiding bishops of The Episcopal Church, together with hundreds of participants in spiritual programs hosted on site. Overseeing hospitable arrangements and logistics these 30 years are Canons Anilin Collado, retreat center manager, and Luis Garibay, building superintendent.
In 2007, Bishop Jon Bruno made the decision to create “one cathedral ministry in two locations,” designating historic St. John’s Episcopal Church the pro-cathedral of the diocese to host larger liturgical services, working alongside the ongoing ministries of the Cathedral Center in Echo Park.
These came to include HFS Adoption and Foster Services, a longstanding Los Angeles agency that Bishop Bruno welcomed to become an Episcopal diocesan institution. Also joining in residence was Seeds of Hope, the diocesan food security program that includes distribution of fresh produce and the tending of the Edendale Grove community garden.
A New Chapter: St. Paul’s Commons
In 2019, after a period of consultation guided by Bishop John Harvey Taylor, the decision was reached to consolidate all cathedral ministries at St. John’s and rename the Echo Park campus as St. Paul’s Commons. At the heart of this concept is the goal of using the campus as a nexus for strengthening common life within the diocese and common cause with other partner organizations.
In attendance at a Eucharist marking the renaming, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams offered a prayer and blessed the historic cathedra, inlaid with wood from Winchester Cathedral, in advance of its move to St. John’s. In the October days following, the cathedra, along with the companion chair of the bishop suffragan, was transported to St. John’s Cathedral and installed in the chancel, bringing new symbolism to the sacred space.
At that time, it could not have been imagined that the COVID-19 pandemic would unfold just five months later, resulting in the suspension of public worship services and the expansion of livestreamed liturgies around the world. Bishop Taylor – tirelessly assisted by the Rev. Canon Melissa McCarthy, diocesan canon to the ordinary and chief of staff – shaped and introduced protocols fostering safety for all members of congregations and schools.
During the carefully phased time of return to ministry at St. Paul’s Commons, attention was given to new ways of worshiping, working, and meeting that had emerged during the pandemic. Space was more readily available on campus to welcome ministry partners, who have come to include the Nefesh Jewish Community conducting weekly Shabbat services in the sanctuary, and the Immaculate Heart Community, an ecumenical order with more than a century of history in Southern California and the Central Coast. In addition, Holy Spirit Fellowship has brought its Thursday Eucharists to the lakeview room named for civil rights martyr Jonathan Daniels.
Also coming aboard increasingly is Changeist, a nonsectarian youth empowerment organization that gathers scores of participants in Saturday workshops on vital social issues. Regular meetings of the Echo Park Neighborhood Council are held each month, and various other community groups are making regular use of meeting space made available at reasonable rates. Opportunities for collaboration abound.
Two weeks after the Echo Park campus opened in 1994, the Los Angeles Times paid tribute to Bishop Borsch and the diocese in a November 7 editorial titled “The Flock That Wouldn’t Stray.” Thirty years later, the concluding paragraph holds true as ever for St. Paul’s Commons: “The spacious, graceful complex, overlooking Echo Park Lake across a broad seep of lawn, is a reminder of the enormous potential that this section of Los Angeles, five minutes from City Hall and the skyscrapers of Downtown, retains. Borsch has given his far-flung diocese a new spiritual center and cast a bold vote of confidence for the future of the city.”
–Written by Robert Williams, canon for common life and historian-archivist of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, who first joined the diocesan staff in 1986 and assists in community relations at St. Paul’s Commons.