Mission Preservation Effort Gets Boost

SAN JUAN CAPISTRANO — Joan Irvine Smith, one of Orange County’s biggest benefactors, has donated $150,000 to help preservation efforts at Mission San Juan Capistrano’s Great Stone Church, it was announced Monday.

Mission officials said they were grateful for the gift, which came from the Joan Irvine Smith & Athalie R. Clarke Foundation, and added that they hoped it would motivate other private and corporate sources to contribute.

“This is the first big donation specifically for that church,” said Jim Graves, a mission spokesman. “This funding is really important. . . . Joan Irvine Smith has been a special friend of the mission.”

When the church was completed in 1806, it was the largest stone church in what is now the United States and the only California mission church made of stone instead of adobe. But six years later its roof collapsed in an earthquake, killing 40 people.

In 1989, the ruin was placed in scaffolding at a cost of $250,000 to comply with new state earthquake regulations and to prevent further collapse.

Graves said the mission then launched a $7-million fund-raising effort to preserve the church and build an internal support structure. About $500,000 has been raised, he said.

“Money is needed to complete the church’s walls and dome, and we have many other projects at the mission too,” Graves said.

“In addition to the church, the soldiers’ barracks, which was made out of adobe, is in bad shape. What we really have here is 221 years of deferred maintenance.”

The church was constructed in the form of a cross and was 180 feet long, 85 feet wide and about four stories high.

Its 125-foot-high bell tower could be seen for 10 miles.

Nearly all the construction materials were hewn from the area, with volcanic tuff coming from the shores of Dana Point and sandstone coming from the Mission Viejo area, officials said.