It is pretty sad that the public cares more about our buildings and grounds than the Old WCG ever did. It was quit obvious that the church was eager to get away from the property and divorce it's self from it. When the sale process was going on many WCG members wondered why the church did not hold the title to the land but lease it out. It would have had a perpetual income coming in from property leases. It was sold for pennies on the dollar and here we are today.
And another underrated but beautiful mid-century building bites the dust: we've heard from a few places (including these photos) that the honeycombed Fine Arts Building at Pasadena's
Ambassador College has been demolished. The Ambassador was run by the Worldwide Church of God from 1947 through 1990; the Fine Arts Building was designed by
Peter J. Holdstock and built in 1966 (it matches the adjacent Science Hall). (The campus was used pretty mouthwateringly in Tom Ford's mid-century porn film
A Single Man). In the mid-aughts, there were big plans to redevelop the whole campus, but they all sort of petered out in the recession; in 2010,
OC developer City Ventures picked up part of the project and revived plans to build condos and senior housing. Sarah Gilbert of the LA Conservancy's Modern Committee tells us via email that the project includes demolition of three buildings--the Fine Arts, Science, and the
Hall of Administration (also by Holdstock). ModCom asked Pasadena to reconsider the demolitions when it extended approvals in January 2012, but no dice. Goodbye Fine Arts, we'll miss you.
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Pasadena's Ambassador West Project is Back On [Curbed LA]
