Wayfarers Chapel, Glass church in Rancho Palos Verdes, US
Wayfarers Chapel is a glass and timber church in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Redwood beams carry floor-to-ceiling glazing that brings the Pacific coastline, the sky and the surrounding trees directly into the worship space.
Lloyd Wright designed the building in the late 1940s and finished construction in 1951. Decades later, landslides made a full disassembly of the structure necessary in June 2024.
The chapel belongs to the Swedenborgian Church of North America and was built as a memorial to Emanuel Swedenborg, the 18th-century Swedish scientist and theosopher. Its popularity as a wedding venue is documented: 800 weddings were held there in 1999, and Jayne Mansfield married Mickey Hargitay there on 13 January 1958. The building also appears in films and series such as The O.C. and Endless Love.
The congregation holds Sunday worship at St Francis Episcopal Church nearby since mid-2024. Updates on the chapel's future reassembly are available on the congregation's official website.
The chapel was dismantled in 2024 after land movement cracked its foundation and broke glass panes; thousands of parts were documented and stored on stable ground nearby. Only the damaged panes could not be saved, and samples were kept to make duplicates for a future rebuild. A proposed site is at Battery Barnes, about 1 mile west of the original bluff.
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