Dear Friends of St. Brigid,

 
For a year and a half our committee has been working to get both the interior and exterior of St. Brigid declared an official city landmark to help protect it from demolition. But that ordinance is now in jeopardy.

As it is now, nothing protects St. Brigid from the wrecker’s ball.

We hope you’ll take a moment to send an e-mail and make a few phone calls to help convince our district supervisor, Michela Alioto-Pier, that the perfectly-preserved 106-year-old church at Van Ness and Broadway is worthy of protection – inside and out.

To send an e-mail to Alioto-Pier (and the rest of the supervisors), please click on this link [e-Mail].

And please read on.

The outside walls of St. Brigid are beautiful and historic. They’re made of recycled San Francisco granite curbstones collected by St. Brigid’s thrifty first pastor. But it’s the inside which contains a century’s worth of statuary, stained glass and artwork. The inside of St. Brigid is where San Franciscans took refuge after the 1906 earthquake. San Francisco’s Irish community came of age inside St. Brigid. And it is inside St. Brigid that the important milestones of 100 years of San Franciscans were mourned and celebrated.

So city planners carefully drafted a landmark ordinance for both the inside and outside of St. Brigid. It was unanimously approved by the Landmarks Board a year ago. The Planning Commission also said yes, unanimously, in October.

But now all that is in jeopardy. To take action please click on this link [e-Mail].

But you may remember that as former-Archbishop William Levada was leaving for Rome, he closed a deal to sell St. Brigid to Elisa Stephens of the Academy of Art University. At the time Stephens said her interest in the church was “historic preservation” and that she wished to use the church only as an auditorium and would leave the inside as it is and has been for 100 years.

So far, so good, right?

Maybe not. The reason this is taking so long is that now Stephens is opposing the landmark ordinance which would preserve St. Brigid. She has a strong motivation: Stephens paid the cash-strapped Archdiocese only $3.7 million for the church, which was looking for a quick source of cash to pay off child-abuse lawsuits. But a year ago last January the Archdiocese had an offer of $8 million for the lot under St. Brigid – if only they could get permission to demolish the church.

Stephens has been very effective; and our district supervisor, Michela Alioto-Pier, has deleted everything but the exterior four walls of the building from the ordinance. Alioto-Pier now wants to move forward with protecting only the façade. So we’re seeing visions of St. Brigid carved up into condominiums.

To be fair, Stephens has done nothing that we know of to destroy the church. In fact we understand she has painted and done some other cosmetic improvements.

But for the long term, we’re not going to be fooled by a proposal that would protect only the four walls, when the treasures inside could be gutted out at any time. We hope you won’t either.

We need your help to persuade the supervisors to protect the inside too.

To e-mail Supervisor Alioto-Pier and the Land Use Committee, please click on this link and then press send: [e-Mail].

We hope you’ll take a few moments to tell Supervisor Alioto-Pier that you care about St. Brigid. After you’ve sent the e-mails, please call her at 415-554-7752. This minute would be best. If you’re calling after hours or voice mail picks up (as is likely) please leave a message explaining why St. Brigid matters to you – and that you want both the inside and the outside to be a city landmark.

What next?

Please call the three supervisors on the Land Use Committee: Sophie Maxwell (415-554-7670), Gerardo Sandoval (415-554-6975) and Jake McGoldrick (415-554-7410). Say the same things. You probably won’t get through to the supervisors directly, but please leave a message saying you want real protections for the inside of St. Brigid.

The supervisors really do pay attention to these calls and e-mails.

Want to learn more? Here are links to historic pictures of St. Brigid: http://www.st-brigid.org/index01.htm

An excellent and balanced article by Carolyn Marshall in the New York Times last month that sums up the (almost) current situation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/us/02brigid.html?ex=1147406400&en=a052da9eeef7c91b&ei=5070

A beautiful (but sad) story by Julian Guthrie about how we tried to stop the Archdiocese from taking our statuary and artwork:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/22/BAGS3FC9D51.DTL&hw=julian+guthrie+St+Brigid&sn=002&sc=870

Another evocative story by Julian Guthrie about how it didn’t have to be this way. The Archdiocese had another bidder who would have simply opened the doors of the church – but they turned him down.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/10/BAGIPELMG91.DTL&hw=julian+guthrie+St+Brigid&sn=001&sc=1000

Supervisor Alioto-Pier told the Times that the supervisors “could landmark the interior of the building with the snap of a finger.”

It’s time to snap.

Sincerely,

Joe Dignan

For quick reference: Phone/Fax: Supervisor Phone Fax Michela Alioto-Pier 554-7752 554-7843 Sophie Maxwell 554-7670 554-7674 Jake McGoldrick 554-7410 554-7415 Gerardo Sandoval 554-6975 554-6979   E-mail:   [Board of Supervisors] Note: Click this link will activate your mail program and automatically generate an email message to the Board of Supervisors with text: Dear Supervisors, Please make St. Brigid Church a city landmark -- both inside and out. This 106-year-old building is a beautiful jewel box -- but the real treasures are inside. Please preserve them for future generations of San Franciscans. Thank You. If your mail program is not pre-defined as default, or for any reasons this fails to work, please directly email a message to "Michela.Alioto-Pier@sfgov.org, Sophie.Maxwell@sfgov.org, Jake.McGoldrick@sfgov.org, Gerardo.Sandoval@sfgov.org, board.of.supervisor@sfgov.org.". Thanks.