Landslides force dismantling of Frank Lloyd Wright Jr’s celebrated glass chapel: ‘It’s a crying shame’

Relocation of the Wayfarers Chapel on the Pacific coast shows the vulnerability of cultural sites in an increasingly volatile climate

For 73 years it reigned, unique and serene, on a high plateau overlooking the Pacific Ocean: the Wayfarers Chapel, Frank Lloyd Wright Jr's midcentury reinvention of what a church could be.

The photogenic, see-through sanctuary framed in a canopy of redwoods was beloved long before it became Instagram-famous. Jayne Mansfield was married there, Brian Wilson too. Last Christmas Eve, two weeks after the chapel had been designated a National Historic Landmark, it took three services to accommodate everyone who showed up to spend the holiday with chapel regulars. No one knew it would be the last one.