Back in Time: The Wadsworth Chapel

The oldest building on Wilshire Boulevard is a fixerupper duplex of a most unusual sort.

Roundels, lunettes and other late-Victorian details adorn the redwood clapboard siding of Building 20 on the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus. Atop the roof's towers and gables sit four Latin and Celtic crosses, hinting at the activities that once filled the interior with songs and sermons.

Until the 1971 Sylmar earthquake forced its closing, the building, completed in 1900, provided dual sanctuaries separated by a double brick wall that also served to deaden the organ rumblings that emanated from either side. At the north end, old soldiers worshiped in a Catholic chapel; at the south end, they prayed as Protestants.

The arrangement was highly unusual, if not unique. And the Catholic-Protestant chapels quickly emerged as a point of pride for veterans and other residents, according to local news reports of the time.

Since being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972, however, the building has deteriorated markedly. Frayed and forlorn, the Wadsworth Chapel — as it is known, in honor of a Civil War officer — needs a restoration that the VA estimates would cost $11.5 million. With the department facing $250 million in deferred maintenance expenses at the expansive campus and unable to foot the bill, preservation advocates have for years scouted for private funding, to little avail.