The Wayfarers Chapel, perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, stood as a landmark on Los Angeles’s Palos Verdes Peninsula for 73 years, ever since its completion in 1951. Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright’s eldest son, Frank Lloyd Wright, Jr, known as Lloyd, the glass-encased sanctuary—with a base of local Palos Verdes stone, a filigree of steelwork, and redwood bents, or arches, that evoked a forest canopy—became a coveted venue for weddings, with as many as 800 in peak years, including the nuptials of such celebrities as Beach Boy Brian Wilson or actress Jayne Mansfield. It has also appeared in many film and TV shoots. In late 2023, the chapel attained National Historic Landmark (NHL) status. But now the entire 1,100-square-foot building, disassembled into meticulously catalogued pieces (thousands of them, if you count individual tiles), is packed away and stored in a covered, outdoor location nearby, on stable ground with similar climatic conditions.
