Catholic Church Buys the Crystal Cathedral in California for $57.5M

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
By Nicole Santa Cruz, Ruben Vives and Mitchell Landsberg

Crystal Cathedral designed by Phillip Johnson, Richard Neutra and Richard Meier.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times / November 14, 2011)

CALIFORNIA - In the end, 2,000 years of tradition carried the day. An Orange County bankruptcy judge ruled Thursday that the Crystal Cathedral, a monument to modernism in faith and architecture, will be sold for $57.5 million to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange, which plans to consecrate it as a Catholic cathedral.  It also marked the end of a remarkable chapter in the history of American Christianity, one that was written in glass and steel by the Crystal Cathedral's founder and guiding light, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller. Under terms of the bid, the diocese will let the church lease back core buildings for three years, but then it has to find a new home. [link]