Bishop Amat

From his earliest days in California Bishop Amat envisioned a seminary of Vincentians in Los Angeles yet operations in Mexico City delayed his mission according to Monseignor Weber. Ironically with the closing of St. John's Seminary and a possible move to LMU, Amat's dream may yet come true!

It took Amat twelve years until Saint Vincent Select College for Boys opened in 1865. In donated rooms at Don Lugo's townhouse on the plaza, the first college in Los Angeles could have started collecting with books from Don Coronel and Don Lugo and any books Amat did not leave to his newly furnished Theological Library in Philadelphia.

Only a few years later a red brick Georgian collegiate hall designed by Miguel Rubi rose as the first American two-story building in Los Angeles and for a time was the first place that came to mind for books and law in the baby city. In 1877 visiting Archduke of Austria Ludwig Salvador noted in his journal Los Angeles in the Sunny Seventies the college with a “small chapel and library”.