Much like in my first blog, I’ll be showcasing another Spanish mission which had a rather interesting impact on me as a child. When my family and I moved to San Diego to stay with family one of the first free places I wanted to visit was another Spanish Mission, much like the Spanish Mission I had grown up close to and fallen in love with from afar.

Mission Basilica San Diego De Alcalá, is the first missions founded in California and was built around the year 1769. It was commissioned by Franciscan Preist Father Serra, but I couldn’t find out any information on who may have helped design this particular mission.

I love the look of this mission, and despite not being a catholic I find myself drawn to the look and traditional feel that radiates off these sort of buildings. Simplistic beauty made of white stone and open areas within the church and courtyard that are filled with the images of saints and other religious figures. As a child, and hearing that San Diego was filled with old missions, I had to find and seek out the one my Aunt described as one of the first built in the city. And much like the old mission in Okmulgee, It inspired a sense of old-world wonder and fascination that welled up into something that inspired my love for smaller, less grand or elaborate designs, simplistic building designs underlying with the more humble human ideas and virtues.

This is Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church located in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and this is perhaps one of the earliest buildings I can remember that had an impact on my life. This building was put up in 1927 and built in the architectural style of Spanish Mission Revival; with this building being added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. Now that’s as much information I could find about the church as it specifically doesn’t have its own website to discuss the building’s main architect, but the feelings I remember as a child from looking up at this building I felt warranted its place of importance in my blog.

I moved a lot as a child between California and Oklahoma and it usually always had something to do with family. And with that sort of disbursement of person one would think I’d have a number of buildings that would elicit some form of admiration, but unfortunately, with the economic status of my parents, I was never in the presence of elaborate structures or grandiose monuments of human design. This is was where the white clayish stone walls Saint Anthony’s church played its part in my life.

In one of the seasons of my life where I lived in Oklahoma this church was always on the way to my friend’s home. I’d ride my bike down the street that led up to this church, and when I saw it I always had to stop, jump off my bike, and hug the fence that blocked off the church’s backyard. I was never catholic but this church was large as a child, and while I never went inside even to this day, the simplistic Spanish beauty of its faded red tile roof and white clay walls always enchanted me. The large wooden doors were guarded by stone-faced saints and the holy mother; this was the entrance to another world if I’d had ever seen one in my early life. If only I could push open those doors I’d find myself in an older world, I use to think. My first memory of beautiful architecture that invoked a sense of wonder and fantasy as if just passing through the threshold would take me someplace new. It’s a shame I never went inside.