Mission San Juan Bautista

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Another mission bearing the name San Juan Bautista is the Misión San Juan Bautista Malibat (Misión Liguí) in Baja California Sur.

Image:Mission San Juan Bautista.JPG

Mission San Juan Bautista was founded on June 24, 1797 by Father Fermín Francisco de Lasuén, the fifteenth mission in the California mission chain. It is named for St. John the Baptist. It is located in the town of San Juan Bautista, in San Benito County, within what was the Third Military District. The town grew up around the Mission. Barracks for soldiers, a nunnery, the Castro House and other buildings were constructed around a large grassy plaza in front of the church and can be seen today in their original form. The town of San Juan Bautista grew rapidly during the California Gold Rush and continues to be a thriving community today.

Mission San Juan Bautista has served mass daily since 1797, so there never was much of a rebirth. The structures suffered extensive damage in the earthquakes of 1800 and 1906. The Mission was restored initially 1884, and then again in 1949 with funding from the Hearst Foundation, and today continues to serve as a parish of the Catholic Diocese of Monterey.

The Mission and its grounds were featured prominently in the 1958 Paramount Pictures film Vertigo (associate producer Herbert Coleman's daughter Judy Lanini suggested the Mission as a filming location). A steeple, added sometime after the Mission's original construction and secularization had been demolished following a fire, so the studio added a "bell tower" using scale models, matte paintings, and trick photography.

1 Image gallery
2 Historic designations
3 See also
4 External links

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Image gallery

Actor Jimmy Stewart stands on the ledge of Mission San Juan Bautista's "bell tower" at the conclusion of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. The Mission didn't actually have a bell tower, so one was constructed on the Paramount backlot for the film.

A photograph of Mission San Juan Bautista taken between 1880 and 1910. The steeple (far right), constructed after the Mission was secularized, was subsequently destroyed in a fire.

A glimpse of the sacristy at Mission San Juan Bautista, circa 1897.

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