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IT is possible that man began to make small-scale models of buildings almost
as soon as he was able to construct the buildings themselves. For many centuries
models were principally religious or funerary in function and only during a more
technically advanced stage were what we might call "architect's models" made.
The religious models were usually symbolic or imaginary while the architect's
models were representations of what was yet to be built. However, in the
nineteenth century we begin to find interest in the construction of models of
buildings already existing or previously existing. The function of such models
is essentially educational and it seems to touch a responsive chord in most
individuals.
Each region has its own favorite subject for models, but in California there
can be little doubt that the preferred one is the old Spanish Missions. Tourists
vicariously tour El Camino Real in a few minutes at Knott's Berry Farm and
children in school learn of the early days of the state by creating their own
models of missions. Most such models are rarely more than an approximation, to
be charitable in describing them, and only very occasionally does one find a
carefully executed, historically accurate representation. The various series of
the whole chain of missions, in particular, tend to be ludicrously inaccurate.
However, had it been completed, one series would have been the definitive
small-scale recreation of El Camino Real.
In the spring of 1941 the first of the planned series, a model of San Diego
Mission, was put on display in the garden of the Ambassador Hotel in Los
Angeles. And what a magnificent model it was! Executed at the scale of an inch
to a foot it was archaeologically correct in all details. The walls were made of
redwood with the surface carved to represent the uneven plaster surface and then
whitewashed (seven coats) and finally carved doors and windows were prepared as
well, while thousands of miniature terracotta tiles covered the roofs. The
structure was brought to life by innumerable figures representing the life of
mission times.
Festivals were recreated as well as the scenes of everyday tasks. Even pieces
of furniture and tools were made to scale.
The intention was that the whole chain of missions was to be recreated on an
outdoor site sufficiently large that they could be placed far enough apart to be
invisible from each other by careful shaping of the terrain and landscaping. The
educational potential of the concept was immense and it is all the more to be
regretted that the events of December 7, 1941, dashed all hopes of its
fulfillment, even though attempts were made to revive the project after the end
of World War II.
The initial idea was conceived by William M. Connelly who had promoted the
Holland (Michigan) Tulip Festival and he took care of the initial financing, but
the real master-mind behind it all was Edith Webb (1878-1959), a most remarkable
woman. She did all the research and supplied the ideas which she and her son
Alfred were able to communicate to a small group of enthusiastic and highly talented artists and
craftsmen. Her son Alfred was the master architect and builder, aided by Avard
Ward, Paul Brandenburg, and Forrest Howsley, while the human figures were done
by Katherine Donnell, and the animals by Peter Terry and Charles Jenny. Her
daughter Helen Duke laid the thousands of tiles. Rev. Joseph Thompson O.F.M.
insured the liturgical authenticity of the religious scenes.
If Edith Webb's name is now known outside of a small group of family and
friends it is as author of Indian Life at the Old Missions, perhaps the
finest book ever written about the California Missions. That book was the
culmination of many decades of research on the missions. Her initial curiosity
about the missions came about because her grandmother had resided in one of the
rooms of Mission Dolores in San Francisco in the period just before the Gold
Rush. Born in Utah, Edith Buckland Webb moved to California around the turn of
the century. Her husband, whom she met here, was a teacher and a photographer.
This latter talent of his was to be of great use during her research in the
succeeding years; his first photograph of a mission shows her in a carriage with
their first-born Alfred at age three months in front of Mission Dolores. In
succeeding years she was occupied with raising a family, but she also applied
her considerable artistic talents to the tinting of his photographs for sale.
His photographs were exhibited in many salons, and he supplied photographic
postcards and enlargements to several of the missions, especially San Diego, San
Juan Capistrano, and San Fernando. By about 1923 she abandoned the simple
tinting of photographs and began to devote herself seriously to painting,
especially, though not exclusively, of the missions. These paintings were
usually closely based on his photographs, but she soon conceived of the idea of
executing a series of paintings of the missions as they appeared in their heydey.
To prepare for this she began a systematic study of the buildings, beginning
with the classic sources such as Bancroft and Engelhardt, then expanding into
the original documents and the collecting of accounts and descriptions by the
old settlers near some of the missions. At the same time she began to put
together a notable collection of historical photographs, mostly acquired from
C.C. Pierce, while her husband took countless others for her. Only in the mid
1930s was she finally ready to begin the paintings. These were first prepared in
perspective by her son Alfred and then transferred to the canvases. She
completed six of them and three, including San Diego, were in process when she
became involved in the Little Mission, and she never returned to these. Her
daughter Helen Duke has undertaken to complete the unfinished ones. The research
done for the paintings, however, served as the basis for her great book which
appeared in 1953, and that, as well as other writing projects, unfortunately
never completed, occupied her last years.
After the initial showing at the Ambassador Hotel, the model was returned to
the backyard of the Webb home in Hollywood where it had been constructed and
remained there for some fifteen years, always with the hope that some day the
project could be taken up again. Eventually the health of Mr. and Mrs. Webb
became such that they gave up the house and the model was dismantled and stored.
Two attempts later to find a permanent home for the model ended in its final
destruction. Today nothing survives of the structure of the buildings, though
the roof tiles, doors, furniture, and figurines all survive. Recently, twenty
years after her death, the research materials of Edith Webb have been given to
the Santa Barbara Mission Archive Library, and among the papers are the working
drawings for the building of the model so that it would be quite possible to
recreate it today, and that would, indeed, be a most worthwhile project to
undertake.
THE PHOTOGRAPHS are courtesy of the author and the collections of Edith Webb.
