"People change and forget to tell each other," author Lillian Hellman once observed. Places change, too, sometimes even disappear, and are often forgotten.

With this article, The Tidings begins an intermittent series that profiles many of the Catholic sites and institutions that were once well known in the City of the Angels and environs, but have disappeared or are completely renovated. We invite you to step back, reflect and appreciate what went before --- and to cherish what remains.

LA INMACULADA CHAPEL

First opened by Msgr. John Cawley as a catechism center in 1923, "La Iglesia de Maria Inmaculada" became a chapel on 762 Gladys Avenue, between Seventh and Eighth Streets, in Los Angeles' downtown industrial area. Bishop John Cantwell dedicated the mission in October, 1931, and priests from St. Vibiana Cathedral were sent to serve the Mexican families living in that section, most of whom had fled the Calles religious persecution in Mexico.

Surrounded by factories, the plain brick chapel had plaster walls in a Spanish texture with a ceiling of brown stained wood and seated about 360, besides a hall and various smaller rooms. The first priest assigned at the mission was Father Fidencio Esparza, who had also fled persecution and came to the U.S. at age 14. His legendary priestly career covered 60 years, 38 of them as pastor of San Antonio de Padua Church in Boyle Heights. (Pope Pius XII named him a monsignor in 1945).

"He was a model parish priest," Cardinal Timothy Manning said of him. "He didn't drive a car. He had no housekeeper. He lived at the subsistence level of his people."

At the 25th anniversary of ordination in October 1956, Msgr. Esparza delivered the sermon at the High Mass celebrated by Father Theodore Shubsda, then a newly-ordained priest sent to serve with Msgr. Esparaza (as had Father William Johnson who, like Father Shubsda, later became bishops).

Another priest who served at the chapel for several years was Father Thomas Peacha, now pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Los Angeles, who remembers vividly the old days and still keeps in touch with some of the old families in the neighborhood.

"I was serving at St. Vibiana Cathedral," he recalled, "but drove every day to the small chapel for Mass. Of course Msgr. Esparza took the street car and somehow managed to use one transfer for the round trip."

Father Peacha recalls fondly the Orduno family who lived behind the church ("The wife, Virginia, took care of the chapel"); Alex Jacquart, "one of our main contributors, a really holy old man who owned several of the old apartment houses in the area"; and many parishioners who worked at the old train depot on Alameda.

"I believe La Inmaculda closed in the late '60s as the area became more industrialized," he noted. "But there were small houses originally that stood between the factories that produced a variety of products. Still today, some of the old families come back to visit the neighborhood."

EL SANTO NINO CHAPEL

This small mission chapel, dedicated in 1925 by Bishop John Cantwell, was located at 1034 Effie Street in the original Chavez Ravine area and served the working class residents nestled among the hills overlooking the city. It was reached by driving or walking up Bishops Road from Broadway near Elysian Park.

The steep Chavez Ravine canyon was originally named for a Mexican pioneer who served on the first County Board of Supervisors --- Julian Chavez, who lived in the area from 1810 to 1879. He was a landowner and one of seven council members who signed the first minutes of the Common Council in 1850, a document recorded entirely in Spanish.

The land named for him became a potter's field in the late 1850s, then the site of a smallpox infirmary in 1880s, still later a tuberculosis sanitarium before the barrio was settled. Many of the early residents kept goats and chickens in their yards and one eccentric was known as the "cat lady" for the numerous felines who lived in her house.

Serving this diverse and isolated community was a young German priest who spoke flawless Spanish, Claretian Father Thomas Matin, whose long sermons held the congregation spellbound. After Mass, crowds mingled in the hall enjoying food and conversation. Father Matin knew everyone by name, was an advocate for juveniles in trouble, and helped unite parishioners into a tightly-knit community.

By 1940 a kindergarten and day school was added close to the church. The Sisters of the Society of Mary taught religion, crafts and care for the children of working mothers. Bishop Cantwell blessed the new center on Sunday, Dec. 31, 1940.

But many of the families, who had fled the persecution in Mexico and had found security in the hills, would soon be further uprooted and eventually be identified as Los Desterrados. After World War II a closer threat endangered the area and El Santo Nino Church was closed in 1952 to make room for a proposed Federal housing project that was never developed.

Then the whole area faced extinction when Walter O'Malley, a Brooklyn lawyer who also happened to own a major league baseball team, surveyed the site in the mid-1950s. Soon after, bulldozers were knocking down the old homes to make room for Dodger Stadium.

Father Matin, while he shepherded the Effie Street chapel, had also opened San Conrado Mission in 1939 on isolated Solano Avenue just over the hill from the stadium. He returned there in 1959 and directed a new church building in 1967 and continued at that ministry until his death in 1975.

Many of the parishioners continue praying to Father Matin in memory of all his efforts for the "uprooted" and the poor. His burial site at San Gabriel Mission remains a place of pilgrimage for those who remember the white haired Padre Tomas, who lived with them and for them in Chavez Ravine.

ST. JOSEPH CHURCH

The fourth church built in the young city of Los Angeles, St. Joseph Church was founded in 1888. Bishop Francisco Mora had established the parish for the German-speaking Catholics in the area on Santee Street between 12th and Pico, when there were more German immigrants in the city than English or Irish. Travelers to L.A. from the Middle West could make the trip for the train fare of one dollar.

The pastor was a Milwaukee diocesan priest, Father Florian Bartsch, who left three years later to become a Trappist monk. He was succeeded by Father A. Reidhaar who began the parochial school, and then the first of many Franciscan pastors, Father Victor Aertker, in 1893.

Initially a small frame building (70 by 32 feet), St. Joseph Church is best recalled as an imposing red brick Gothic building at 12th and Los Angeles Streets opened in 1903. The two external towers rose to a height of 175 feet and the interior consisted of three naves and seven handsome altars. Father Victor, also an astute business man, bought five adjacent lots, constructed the first school house, built an auditorium and had the church almost debt free of the building cost ($125,000) when it was dedicated.

On the feast of St. Joseph, May 3, 1903, the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Archbishop Diomede Falconio performed the ceremony (the first time a papal delegate dedicated a church in the Western states). The pure Gothic style of the edifice was the work of Franciscan Brothers Adrian Wewer and Leonard Darscheid. By 1903 boundaries were set for the parish and soon many other national minorities were attending all the liturgies and services.

Besides the Franciscan pastors, one of the most distinctive Brothers who spent 42 years at St. Joseph was Leopold Penninger, a young Austrian who came to Los Angeles in 1922. Noted for his agility and creativity, he decorated the main altar for all major feasts by devising chains of wire holders for strings of colored vigil lights all the way to the top of the Gothic reredos (48 feet high).

Brother Leopold also pulled the ropes that rang the huge bells and often was lifted off his feet as the bells swung. Over the years he trained a succession of German shepherd dogs to guard the church at night; often times they would flush out a hidden person in one of the confessionals. He died in 1964.

The Dominican Sisters started classes in 1892 and by 1907 Franciscan Sisters assumed educational duties. Many religious vocations followed as did liturgical music stalwarts, including the young Roger Wagner and Paul Salamunovich. The nearby Franciscan Communication Center produced radio and television programming, at one time headed by Capuchin Franciscan Father Anthony Scannell, now executive publisher of The Tidings

Eventually the area and population drastically changed; the area is now in the hub of the garment district. St. Joseph's heritage and tradition was tragically lost, however, on Labor Day 1983 when fire swept through the classic wood building, leaving only charred remains and burned memories. In an editorial following the tragedy, Tidings editor Al Antczak wrote:

"St. Joseph's is gone now. It was our father's house…It is the lesson life. Temporal things pass away. The life of the spirit, formed and deepened at St. Joseph's, does not. That must be the legacy to our city."