For Holy Week, we're featuring this article by volunteer researcher Mary Lou Langedyke, courtesy of the Altadena Historical Society and reprinted with permission. Graphics are courtesy the Historical Society and St. Elizabeth's Church.
By Mary Lou Langedyke
Many are familiar with the role Altadena played in the early 20th century as a major tourist attraction thanks to the Mt. Lowe Railroad. Searching for old postcards of Altadena, I am not surprised to find pictures of Mt. Lowe along with Christmas Tree Lane, our two most common claims to tourist fame. But why are there so many postcards featuring the grotto at St. Elizabeth’s church?
The story begins in the 1920’s with the construction of St. Elizabeth Church, the rectory and convent using the designs of Wallace Neff. An elementary school was added facing Woodbury where the current parking lot exists. St. Elizabeth was under the leadership of Msgr. William Corr who served as its pastor from 1924 – 1940. Because of his visionary leadership the parish and its treasury grew in size. Fiestas held during the late 1920’s earned $10,000. A Christmas tableau along Lake Street drew thousands of visitors. The parish school enrollment reached over 300, one of the largest in the diocese.
Msgr. Corr purchased a lot on Lake Street and New York Drive in 1928, which, as the Pasadena Star News hinted, would become a shrine to Our Lady of Lourdes. While waiting for construction and funding, the area was used as a school playground for the girls.
Using funds from the estate of Mrs. Mary Young, Msgr. Corr asked Ryozo Fuso Kado, a fifth generation stone and rock craftsman, described as “the greatest builder of Catholic shrines in the West and perhaps the whole country,” to create the shrine which is his thirty-first and most ambitious sculpture in the Los Angeles area.
Kado’s shrine is his interpretation of the famous grotto in Lourdes, France. Not an exact replica, as some believe, the artist used 135 tons of lava rock from the Mono Basin and ninety tons of cement to create a twenty-five foot shrine that provides as peaceful a respite today as it did when it was dedicated in 1939. Nestled among young deodars, the shrine had Carrera marble statues of Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Bernadette. Damaged by vandals in the 1980’s, the original statues have been replaced. The grotto contains a walk-in pool, and the peaceful sound of running water, all behind the original cement railings crafted to look like hewn logs. A cement pulpit shaped like a carved-out log, additional railings and kneelers make it easy to envision the liturgies celebrated weekly at the base of the Grotto in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
On the first Sunday in October 1939, thousands of people (5,000 according to the Pasadena Star News and 10,000 according to the archdiocesan newspaper The Tidings) marched in procession from the school on Woodbury, down Fiske Street, across Atchison and up Lake Street entering the Grotto through the wrought iron gates of Our Lady of Lourdes Grotto. Within a year 500,000 devotees and tourists made pilgrimage to the holy place.Church hierarchy and community leaders joined school children, parish organizations, and the American Legion in a candle lit procession along with the faithful for what would become a common scene over the next fifteen years. The Grotto, landscaped with pathways, a fountain and Stations of the Cross painted by Theodore Braasch (who also painted the large pictures of scenes from the Old and New Testament which adorn the walls of the church) became a scene of devotion and pageantry. During the Christmas season alone about 200,000 came to enjoy the fourteen Christmas tableaus and the Nativity scene along Lake Street in front of the Church and visit the Grotto.
Those who believed in the devotional aspects of the waters of Lourdes and its miraculous power to heal the sick were drawn to Altadena by the thousands in the 1940’s. When World War II made it impossible for pilgrims to travel to France, water from Lourdes was brought to Altadena and used in the devotions held each Friday and Sunday afternoons at 4 PM.
Rev. James P. Diamond was in charge of these services. A “peace candle” was lit by the American Legion which burned until the end of World War ll. `Visitors came from over 32 states and five foreign countries. Organized pilgrimages continued during the 1940’s, but gradually diminished in the 1950’s. Tom Joyce, a life-long parish member and Altadena resident, attended St. Elizabeth’s elementary school in the 1940s. As a member of the boys choir, he participated in the processions up Lake St. as well as many celebrations in the Grotto. He recalls singing traditional Latin hymns and describes these events as “looking like the Rose Parade.” Tom noted that when he wanted to ditch school for a few hours there was no better spot to hide out than the grotto. He would climb up the grotto stones which provided easy access to the top - certainly not a use envisioned by Fr. Corr! Today, Tom says that the Grotto is “my favorite place in Altadena.”
The Grotto is no longer the scene of pageantry and pilgrimages. Now it serves the parish as an outdoor space for celebrations of all kinds such as Easter sunrise Mass, prayerful meditation, dinners and dancing and even my wedding reception in September 1982.
Sources:
Interview with Tom Joyce, March 13, 2011
St. Elizabeth Parish Archives, thanks to Carolyn Virgil and Carol Sharkey.
Brenner, Robert E. Msgr., St. Elizabeth Parish – Fifty Parish Years, 1918-1968, Altadena, CA., 1968.
Weber, Frances, Catholic Footprints in California, Hogarth Press, 1970, pp 107-108.
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