Deluges past

The Mount under construction in 1930 or 1931. Much of the work on the building
coincided with an El Niño condition and lots of rain.

AS WE ADMIRE THE RAIN cascading onto the Chalon Campus, we find ourselves wondering about the El Niños (Los Niños?) of the olden days, and we recall reading about some problems in the early 1930s when the new college campus was under construction.

Although the groundbreaking was held during Commencement on June 16, 1929 (a day that began with a downpour), work on the foundation of the new campus' first and only building didn't get going until late in the year and early in 1930. According to the El-Niño.com website, 1930-1931 was an El Niño year. That meant trouble.

Here's how Sister Germaine McNeil describes what happened next in her 1986 book, History of Mount St. Mary's College, Los Angeles, 1925-1975:

When the excavation for the piers of the foundation got underway, it was discovered that they would have to be much deeper than first estimated to reach solid bedrock. Then, when rains seeped into the exposed Monterey Shale of the soil, several landslides occurred. (p. 9)

Further investigation revealed that the cost of construction had more than doubled, but the superintending architect, I. E. Loveless, refused to halt construction. The provincial leadership of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet had no alternative but to fire him, and the brought in the original campus architect, Mark Daniels, to finish the job.

Daniels could not have been surprised. He had earlier warned in an essay in The Tidings of potential problems with the steep hillside and "soils." His revision of the plans entailed shifting the main load-bearing part of the structure several feet to the east, i.e., further up and into the hill. Since part of the building was already in place, Daniels had to incorporate some existing walls. The result of this alteration is clearly manifest in the long corridor between the cafeteria and bookstore entrance on the ground floor of Brady Hall.The width of the hallway is the precise distance Daniels had to move the foundation.

Construction continued as planned, and faculty and students were able to move into the finished campus in mid-April, 1931. But El Niño was still making its presence felt.The college's first concert was scheduled for a Sunday a couple of weeks after the move. The venerable journal of Sister Dolorosa Mannix, CSJ, picks up the story in McNeil's book:

Invitations for the recital were sent out and all was in readiness. On the preceding night rain fell in torrents, washing watery streams of clay across the normally good shale road. The road was not paved. We had no money for paving... Later, Mrs. E. L. Doheny's generosity helped pave the road. (15)

The dedicated concertgoers made their way up the treacherously slick road anyway -- only one accident is recorded -- and the performance went on.

But that wasn't quite all the 1930-31 El Niño had up its (his?) sleeve.

Once, more, Sister Dolorosa:

About a month after the opening of the college, several of us noticed in the night a faint sound as of grains of sand blown against the window by a windstorm. ... No one seemed to have paid much attention until, rising at 5 the next morning and drawing back our curtains, we found the tiles white with snow and the ground a wonderful white sheet. It was 3 inches deep and lasted for several days. (14)

Never a dull moment during an El Niño, even if it just seems like more rain than usual. Will Mount students at Chalon or Doheny be treated to snow this coming May? We can cross our fingers and hope. And we're pretty sure that students in the 2015-16 El Niño won't be too different from their foremothers in 1930-1931:

Great excitement reigned. Some of the girls had never seen snow at close range, so classes were deferred for an hour after [shuttle] arrival, while students climbed the hill ... to view the charming winter scene in May. Others played snowball and made a 4-foot snowman which, placed in a sheltered corner, remained with us for several days. True to life, some students, ignoring the winter sports, huddled around the radiator. (Ibid.)

Happy New Year, and here's to a safe, warm and memorable (but not too memorable) El Niño of '15-'16!

Is that Mary Chapel?

LOOKING FOR BEL AIR FIRE IMAGES to add to our online photo archive, I came across a photocopy of a remarkable newspaper article describing a painting. In the fuzzy photo is Mary Chapel in flames.

The clipping, headlined "Bel Air Flames Again in Massive 'Firescape,'" with the "kicker" headline, "Chief Relives Battle." It describes a massive, 16-foot painting providing an eyewitness remembrance of the firefight at the Mount.

The photocopy and this scan are poor quality, but there's no mistaking the contours of the chapel and the steps leading to the arched door. A silhouetted figure aims a thin stream of water into the raging flames. In the foreground a firefighter renders aid to one of his teammates stretched out on the pavement.

I've read numerous accounts of the disaster, but never one that mentions Mary Chapel fully engulfed. Apparently the fire did start burning through the big wooden front doors and may have melted some of the leading in the stained glass before it was stopped. But unlike Rossiter Hall and the fine arts building, the chapel was saved.

The archives photocopy identifies neither the newspaper nor the date, unfortunately. Publication was definitely some years after the 1961 fire, because it mentions that the painter, Charles W. Bahme, took two years to finish the work, and that he had retired in 1967. Perhaps it was 1971, on the 10th anniversary .

Bahme wasn't just any eyewitness. He was deputy chief of the LAFD and the field commander for the fire. He was at the Mount on November 6, 1961, as cinders ignited buildings on all sides of the College, as the wind was gusting close to 100 miles an hour, and as the water supply started to fail.

The huge painting is a composite of his recollections of the entire disaster, which blazed through Bel Air and Brentwood for three days and at one point had a 154-mile fireline. "I tried to condense into this [work] the whole scope of the fire," Bahme said, adding that doing it was a way to "get it out of my system." The battle to save the Mount is clearly front and center in his memories.

Maddeningly, the clipping is cut off in the middle of his description of saving a college building that had caught fire. Ack! Which one? And then what happened?

Another day, another set of archival mysteries. The article is an great find, but not as great as the questions it raises: Where's the rest of it? Where was it published? Most of all, what became of that 16-foot painting? Will we ever find out?

So, so close

IT'S WELL KNOWN THAT THE BEL AIR FIRE of Nov. 6, 1961, came very, very close to the Mount. What may not be quite as well known is how close -- and how close the College came to being lost.

In fact, the 6 o'clock news that night had Mount St. Mary's College burned to the ground. When they were finally evacuated around noon on that terrifying Monday, resident students were told that the firefighters had given up the College for lost. They gathered that evening in their homes or with friends and listened to the reports, tears streaming down their cheeks.

A dramatic nighttime photo transmitted by United Press International showed the blazing ruins of the Marian Hall of Fine Arts on the west. Rossiter Hall, on the east, had already burned. Surrounded by fire in the smoky, lightless night on the Mount, it was easy to conclude there was nothing left.

Two of the CSJs, away at Notre Dame University working on their doctorates, endured two days of agony, fearing the worst. Local newspapers and national television reported the College's loss but didn't get the name right. Then one of the Sisters got a phone call. Most of the campus had been spared. The letter Sister Mary Brigid Fitzpatrick wrote to Sister Rebecca Doan, telling her of the prayers of the community in South Bend, is in the College Archives, dated Nov. 8, 1961.

We have scores of photos, mostly snapshots, from the days after the fire, but only two or three from the day of the fire. The College community had evacuated by early afternoon, so there were no students or faculty to take pictures at the peak of the disaster. However, I did come across the photo above, taken by person unknown in the late afternoon. The smoke towering just behind Brady Hall tells the story of how close the flames really were.

There are many riveting stories in the jumble of records in the Archives; the Bel Air Fire artifacts are listed in four separate locations in the files. Pulling them all together is a fascinating but sobering process, especially when you see that nice, lush, 50-year-old chaparral just over there in the next canyon. The word miracle was used more than once in 1961, and now, seeing these pictures for the first time, I understand why.

Some of the photographs and other artifacts relating to the Bel Air Fire are on display in the Reading Room of the Charles Willard Coe Memorial Library at Chalon, with additional items in the College Archives. The exhibit will run through December.

Help on high

A TRIO OF MARCHING LADDERS greeted me this morning. Gregorio Garcia and Felix Miguel are wrapping up work on a system of catch pans, pipes and drains that will, I am assured, keep the leaks away from Special Collections.

This is such good news I celebrated with an extra cup of coffee. There are at least four sources of H2O above me - bathrooms, rain gutters, air ducts and HVAC pipes - and all four have dripped, dribbled or poured down water in the past three years.

Meanwhile, there are a couple dozen newly rebound or repaired books ready for reshelving. Having spent thousands of dollars on them, I've hesitated to put them back. Gregorio tells me I don't have to worry. Well, let's say I don't have to worry as much. This is still the low point of a four-story building!

Splendid solitude

AMID ALL THE NEWS COVERAGE of this weekend's "Carmageddon" shutdown of the 405 have been historic pictures of the Sepulveda Pass. This impossibly busy thoroughfare didn't get a paved road until the 1920s, so the photos are fun to look at. If you know where to look, you can see Mount St. Mary's College.

The small picture at right from 1961 (before the Bel Air Fire) was reproduced in the Los Angeles Times, and I've marked the College in yellow. It really shows what a visible landmark the College was in the 70 years before the Getty Center was built.

The picture at top is taken from the west in 1956 or -57. Alone on its hill, the College could see -- and be seen from -- much of Los Angeles. It's astonishing to see how bare the canyon was in those days before the 405 pushed through.

Our oldest alumnae still long for the days when you could see the Mount from Santa Monica, the only light source in the otherwise black mountain front. The shrine to Our Lady of the Mount on the western slope was lit up all night and served as a beacon to boats out on the Bay.

As the college grew, so did its nighttime signature. One night early in World War II, a panicky neighbor called the college to demand that the spotlights illuminating Mary Chapel be doused immediately lest the Japanese home in on them and bomb the Westside. The College complied.

A few people express quiet regret about the loss of the Mount's landmark prominence in the shadow of the Getty. One of the CSJs told me last year that the community had always been told that their 180-degree view from Carondelet Center was to be "preserved in perpetuity," and that the entire canyon was part of some kind of "trust" that would prevent construction. The sisters were as surprised as anyone when the Getty Trust proved otherwise.

The college is closing for Carmageddon (as is the Getty). It's hard enough to get here on a normal day! For one weekend, though, the Sepulveda Pass will revert to impassable and the Mount will enjoy a bit of its old solitude.

More water from on high

WHAT WOULD THE ARCHIVIST DO without plastic? When I heard the steady drip, drip, drip on the ceiling tiles the other day, all I had to do was unfurl some of the plastic stashed in a convenient corner, the same stuff that covered the shelves and cabinets for three months earlier this year.

This is my fourth leak at the Mount since I started in 2008. The Coe Library has very special hydrophysics, in which all water from above ends up in this room.

This is not unexpected, but predictable doesn't mean it's not a serious problem. The public restroom next to the President's Conference Room two floors up has a toilet prone to overflowing. So prone, evidently, that few people bother to report it. It merrily gushes forth for an hour or so before the water reaches me.

I have hopes it'll be fixed -- mostly because there's a big electrical transformer between it and the Archives. If water can be stopped from reaching there, I'll be 'ome and dry, as the English say.

Then there's the temperature. I log the daily high and low along with relative humidity -- both crucial to not cooking the rare books too quickly. (The higher the temperature, the faster the chemical reaction.) Picture my surprise when I returned from vacation recently to see that in one week the local environment had soared to an unbelievable 126 degrees.

On the other end, 65 was much more like it. But that 6% humidity! Pity the poor leather bindings on these old fellows.

These problems are part of the quotidian challenges for archives. A little extreme, perhaps, but all in a day's work. However, the real problem is accepting material for the archives and knowing we may not be able to keep it safe.

How bad was that mold?

Going through my photos for yesterday's post, I came across this one -- clearly the most disgusting book of all. Seldom in book mold do we get to see such rich texture, such vibrant hues. The pic doesn't really do justice to the black stuff, which looked like silk velvet and was probably an eighth of an inch thick. The white mold was more lacy while the greenish variety looked like old-fashioned penicillin. By the way, the Mount brought in experts to test it, and it was declared safe and nontoxic... which was good, considering how much of it we were dealing with (eventually, after this picture was taken, with rubber gloves).

Restoration

NEARLY SIX MONTHS AFTER THE FLOOD in December, the formerly wet, disgustingly moldy books are trickling back into Special Collections from the book hospital -- Kater-Crafts Bookbinders of Pico Rivera.

First among the patients was St. Augustine of Hippo, whose Opera Omnia in eight big tomes took a direct hit when the ceiling collapsed in a rush of rainwater. The 17th Century paper rapidly developed mold (middle photos) and the bindings -- already pretty wrecked -- started to crumble. In the opinion of my friend Kristen St. John at UCLA, there was nothing to be gained by trying to keep the old bindings, which anyway weren't original. After their page by page vacuum job, I drove the books over to Kater-Crafts and waited for the results.

The fine binders at K-C matched the original raised-band spine and labeling, right down to the gold-leaf dingbats in red and black (top photo). To save on costs, the binding is partly synthetic

They're beautiful. Are they too beautiful? This is one of the knotty questions in library preservation. Should old books "look old"? If the old bindings aren't artifacts unto themselves -- and St. Augustine's weren't -- should they be kept, even if they're falling apart?

It's a matter of taste and policy. We're a library, not a museum, and the books are here to be used and looked at. But like the critics who disapproved of the Sistine Chapel restoration, some people think a bright and shiny new binding on an antique book is jarring.

The way I see it, one goal here is to ensure that the books are around for another 350 years. They were already rebound a couple of times, according to Kristen, so one more round isn't going to hurt. Neither does it mean binding them in standard library buckram, as someone suggested, and if you want to see some heartbreaking rebindings I've got plenty of buckram to show you.

In fact, I like the way the new bindings juxtapose with the old, water-stained pages (bottom photo), especially on St. Augustine. The bishop of Hippo wrote these works in the 4th and 5th Centuries, and yet they're as current as today, with new translations appearing regularly and e-book versions widely available. Shiny new bindings are a vote for the bright future of a timeless author.

They definitely liven up the place. And they're a pretty good reminder that rain gutters require annual maintenance.

Giving up mold for Lent

IT'S ASH WEDNESDAY, a day or two shy of three months since the Big Leak. We're celebrating by moving an undamaged table and chairs into the Spearman Room. There is a lot more to do before we can close the book, so to speak, on the Disaster of '10, but at least I can say we're done with mold.

Green mold, black mold, white mold, and other interesting colors emanating from mold. I didn't know that the pastel hues we noticed on damaged endpapers -- pink, yellow, lavender and a delicate celandon -- were actually mold souvenirs, "excrement," in the pungent diagnosis of an expert.

Day after day, page after page, my volunteer Mary Marshall and I plied our little spore-trapping vacuum cleaner and had the satisfaction of watching thick layers of dried mold being sucked away. In the process we also cleaned up the dirt and debris of centuries, in some cases: Half the pages of Volume XI of the works St. Augustine (1689) were coated with fine, white sand, as if a seminarian had taken the big folio to the beach for some summer reading.

The colorful mold stains remain as reminders of what happens when an old building leaks. But these are merely the latest ones. Among our rare books are many ancient stains that tell the stories of other buildings, other leaks. I pity those poor librarians who didn't have HEPA vacuum cleaners.

Science lab

LOS ANGELES' EPIC RAINS and consequent flood in the Archives were two months ago this week. Being tied up with one thing and another (like a presidential search committee), I'm finally getting the chance to get a good look at the damage.

Total number of books affected: about 50. Total volume of archives affected: about 4 linear feet. Total losses: about half a dozen old Bibles and a box of folders.

All in all, not too bad. Chatting with my friends in the profession, it's not all that unusual to hear about entire rooms that have developed mold. Many of our books just need a good once-over with a special spore-trapping vacuum cleaner and they can go back on the shelves. Others will require more extensive (and expensive) treatment, but this is the College's patrimony (better, matrimony) and worth every dime.

The science experiment aspect of it is pretty interesting, too. All that literature about the proverbial "cool, dry place" is correct: Once you venture out of the 68 degrees, 40% humidity ranges you're asking for a blooming garden of moldy trouble.

I knew we were in for it back on Dec. 29 when my little hygrometer recorded 99% relative humidity and a maximum temperature of 78 degrees. This lovely specimen, above, is on Vol. X of the works of St. Augustine, ca. 1685. Mold goes dormant stays that way for a long time. This stuff may be the lineal descendant of mold that was introduced centuries ago.

The triage continues. I'm deciding now which books are headed for the trash bin (the ones that can be replaced for less than $40), which get to go home soon, and which will get patched up in a book hospital somewhere. Along the way I've discovered a couple of certified treasures. All of it is part of the Mount's long heritage and worth preserving for future generations of students. Except for St. Augustine's mold, of course. That's really gotta go.

Triage

BACK IN MY NEWSPAPER DAYS, the word triage applied to too much news, too many possibilities, too few resources and thus some painful decision making. What we "went after" had mostly to do with who was working that particular night and how much newsprint we had to work with.

I thought about that well-worn battlefield term this week as I returned to a freezing Coe Library and the part of the 1st Floor given over to storing the damp victims of the Dec. 20 flood. Which will survive, and which will end up in the Dumpster?

The French World War I doctors who coined the term knew from agonizing decision making. Sorting through wet, ruined and occasionally moldy books, and deciding how to spend meager restoration resources, is mostly art -- and if there's science involved we'll need to call someone more expert than I.

One of the resource we don't have is time. The students are back in a few days, and one of their favorite study areas, the Porch, is currently doing duty as a glum little book and paper hospital, although it's at least a bright and sunny one.

I'm starting with the easy triage, the wet unprocessed folders of would-be archives. For a Lone Arranger, their marginal value isn't equal to the effort of drying them out and putting them in fresh, expensive, acid-free folders. Not compared to everything else that needs to be evaluated. Into the Dumpster they go.

I cheerfully admit that sorting through the backfiles from a discontinued 1980s project delays the inevitable, difficult confrontation with the rare books. We'll let the patients dry out for a few more days and see if they don't improve a little on their own.

Water magnets

I GOT A LOOK at the damage in the College Archives from the flood of Dec. 20, and all I can say is, it sure could have been worse. Almost miraculously, our complete run of Harper's Magazine through the Civil War (1861-65) seems to be okay. And, Deo gratias, our most valuable Bibles are safely out of harm's way on exhibit at Santa Clara University.

Still, it's a mess. Here's a photo of a less valuable 19th Century Bible that looks to be a total loss. It's moldy and not worth the expense of restoration. There are several other books in similar condition and facing a similar fate.

Some of the archival records awaiting processing got soaked and are still in their cardboard boxes. I'm hoping they're not moldy as well. Yecch -- won't that be fun! What a way to start the New Year. Well, happy 2011 anyway. Truth be told, many of our rare books show signs of water damage from centuries ago. You can't fight physics.

Deluge No. 3

I TEACH MY graduate students that through an as yet unexplained force in hydrology, rare books attract water.

So once the shock wore off (in about 20 seconds), I was not altogether surprised to hear from a colleague on Monday that parts of the ceiling in the College Archives had collapsed and sent buckets of runoff all over some of the Special Collections stacks and my work table. If drains and downspouts haven't been maintained, you'll find where the leaks are real quick when it rains for nearly a week without stopping.

This is actually the third leak since I've been in the Archives -- an average of one a year. It is by far the biggest, but back in 2008 it didn't take long to figure out that the Spearman Room is the lowest point in the Charles Willard Coe Memorial Library. Overflowing toilets, condensation from the A/C and now rain have all had their turn. Rare books are water magnets.

I don't know whether it's long tradition, economics or what that inspires architects to locate rare books in basements. They all do it. In teaching library preservation management, I've seen plenty of blueprints that run all manner of pipes and plumbing directly over the treasures. One of my students just a couple weeks ago got firsthand experience when a clogged drain leaked onto the bound records in the basement of the Orange County Archives. The epic flood in Florence in 1967 swamped thousands of square feet of centuries-old basements, each filled to the joists with medieval books and manuscripts. Forty-three years later, by the way, they're still cleaning up.

I had to sit this disaster out, unfortunately; I'm home on vacation and getting over a sprained knee. My wonderful colleagues Joseph, Cheryl and Lorena moved the wet books to dry ground -- the Porch -- set up a few fans, interleaved with paper towels what pages they could. The stacks shelves are covered with plastic in case there's more water. We're all hoping that the first floor won't bloom forth with a garden of mold, which has happened before. We'll know next week.

I was dreaming of a wet Christmas, but this isn't quite what I had in mind!