Angelus News | May 7, 2021 | Vol. 6 No. 9

never really had a verifiable narrative.”
Few in this close-knit mission
parish have taken the tragic fire more
personally than Huerta. Since the
’70s, Huerta’s family has celebrated
baptisms, weddings, confirmations,
and anniversaries here. Her brother is
buried in the cemetery on the mission
grounds.
But now she is a first-person witness
to how last summer’s fire is providing
key insights into mysteries like what
the church’s interior design first
looked like, or how its design evolved
over the centuries.
“We have learned so much about this
building from the fire,” said Huerta.
While researchers have long thought
the structure was built with adobe
bricks, the blaze has revealed that the
natives and missionaries who worked
together to build the mission actually
used fired brick and mortar.
Six wooden statues and a painting
with a miraculous reputation damaged
by the fire are in the process of
professional restoration. The church’s
original reredos and altar, which
firefighters were able to save during
the early morning firefight, also need
to be cleaned and repainted.
The façade of Mission San Gabriel survived
the July 2020 fire. | VICTOR ALEMÁN
UC Riverside historian Steven Hackell
is the chairperson of the mission’s
Museum Committee. By forcing the
removal of all of its surviving artifacts
from the mission, the fire means his
team can now develop a full inventory
of those items, which include
paintings, sculptures, books, and even
liturgical vestments — and decide
how and where to best preserve them.
Like Huerta, he sees the work ahead
as a special opportunity.
“If you went through your attic and
cleaned it up one day, you wouldn’t
just put everything back where it was
once the floors are dusted and the
windows are clean,” Hackell explained
in an interview. “You’d make
decisions.”
The mission church’s steel beams were warped by the
intense fire. They had to be carefully removed and
replaced by new ones last month. | VICTOR ALEMÁN
Huerta hopes that some of those decisions
will be formed by an advisory
panel with art experts from LACMA
and the Getty to guide the repainting
of the church’s interior.
“I think it’s a great opportunity for us
to be a little more methodical about
deciding what the mission is going to
look like after we’re done, and what
educational opportunities we have to
share with the public,” said Huerta.
Both Huerta and Hackell see the
events of the last year as a much-needed
jumpstart to the task of restoring
the mission for future generations to
behold.
May 7, 2021 • ANGELUS • 13