St. Isidore Historical Plaza has been at the heart of the Los Alamitos community for nearly 100 years.
The historic site has served generations of locals over the years – from families who attended Mass and celebrated sacraments there when it was a Roman Catholic church, to residents who revel at wedding receptions and the city’s annual Winter Wonderland event there now that it’s been turned into a community center.
Now, just as they’ve done many times over the last century, St. Isidore supporters are again banding together for a cause – this time to raise the money needed for critical repairs to the plaza chapel damaged by time and recent heavy rains.
St. Isidore Historical Plaza, the nonprofit of the same name that runs the grounds, is fundraising to replace the chapel’s clay tile roof, shore up a deteriorating wall, and restore its colorful stained-glass windows that have had to move to storage for safe-keeping, said Tanya Aguilar Barraza, president of the plaza’s board of directors.
A total fundraising goal has yet to be set, Barraza said, but experts are currently being brought in to give quotes on how much it will cost to fix these key areas.
“The plaza is what we refer to as a gem,” Barraza said. “We need the community’s support to make the repairs. We would hope that they would help us in trying to take care of what we feel to be the ‘heart of the city.”
St. Isidore was established as a Roman Catholic parish in 1921, and in 1922 community members and parishioners – mostly field hands, sugar beet factory employees, farmers, ranchers and dairymen – united to ask the Bixby Land Company for property on which they could construct a church building.
The company sold the land to what was the Diocese of Monterey-Los Angeles at the time for a $10 filing fee, and in 1926 members of the thriving, multicultural community built the chapel with their own hands, plaza records show.
Physical updates have been made to the building…
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