future Hannon library construction Oct '07

Last Friday while on bike Father Rolfs was involved in a collision with one of the heavy construction trucks. Today I learned he was apparently on his way to take his daily photo of the library construction.

Until he returns I try to remember to keep it going.

At Last!

Well it's mid-May and the big toys showed up to start playing in the dirt this week!

The May 7th bluff

The students are now gone for the summer so let the digging begin!

Krazy!

Rhetorical composition led the curricula at St. Vincent's College in early Los Angeles and the elite small college produced a number of national figures including a close contemporary of philosopher John Dewey, Columbia educator Dr. David Snedden, composer Ferde Grofe (Grand Canyon Suite) and Krazy Kat cartoonist George Herriman.


Argued as one of the earliest LA noir detective novelists, S.S. Van Dine attended St. Vincent’s in 1902 enrolled as William Huntington Wright.

St. Vincent's College, 1887-1910

Needing even more space despite a major 1883 renovation and with real-estate booming speculation the campus moved southwest in 1887 to a much larger site at Washington Street and Grand Avenue. Designed and constructed by J.V. McNeil Construction, the new campus boasted a “modern” furnished College Library. The first major improvement came in 1903 with the arrival of the new Bishop of Monterey and Los Angeles. Dr. Thomas Conaty, a nationally renown orator and former Rector of The Catholic University of America generously donated books from his personal collection to build up the library.

St. Vincent's College, 1867-1887

Today the property at Sixth and Hill is home of the Los Angeles Jewelry Mart.

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”.