Restoration Drawing: Facade of Mission House 1937

Geoffrey Holt made this restoration drawing of a mission house facade at an unspecified date. In it, we see the architectural bones of the mission, the door, the red tile floor, and the decaying plaster of the building. Holt’s image quietly reflects the complex history of the California missions. Founded by Spanish Catholic priests in the 18th and 19th centuries, they were intended to convert the indigenous population to Christianity and integrate them into the Spanish colonial society. But behind this facade of religious conversion was also a brutal system of forced labor and cultural assimilation that decimated Native populations and their ways of life. The mission door represents a meeting point, one that marks both an entrance and a threshold between cultures. The images of deer being hunted are a visceral reminder of the cost of colonialism, a poignant reflection on the loss of indigenous practices.