Fieldnotes From a Neighborhood: A Portrait of the San Pedro Chapel

Rewrite of November 10
Descriptive Piece
Bill Plapp

It's a long way from Chicago to Tucson. Yes indeed, a long way and a long time from the flat Midwestern plains, the fake Gothic Protestant churches, and the high-steepled brick Catholic churches of a Midwestern childhood of the 1930's to the Tucson of the 1990's. The plain, even severe, and very serene San Pedro Chapel is something new for me, something very different, but yet reminiscent of churches of past years.

It's a lovely setting the chapel has in its quiet and semi-isolated plot of land only a few yards above the busy street. It's almost lost from the road, but the neighborhood is not lost from the chapel. Rather, the chapel's a valued place and provides a focus for the residents of the Old Fort neighborhood. It's an easy place to dismiss from a distance, but more fulfilling from close up.

It's the view from the chapel and the landscaping that most entrance me. The Santa Catalinas stand out sharp and clear from the front steps, much more striking in appearance than from the road some 50 yards closer. And the landscaping! Whoever was responsible left the desert intact, but added just enough human touches to make the place more interesting. Man is here, the landscaping says, but only to add to nature and the world, not to supplant it with values of a civilization less satisfied with the reality of the Sonoran desert.

Amazing to me the external cleanliness of the chapel. There are no signs of the vandalism that mars public places in most of late twentieth century America. No graffiti, no broken windows. What is it about this place that protects it so?

There is always a strong sense of the past in Tucson. The city was a busy Mexican town long before the Anglos arrived. The Mexican-ness has been eroded only slowly and indeed, much of it is still alive and well. The chapel is living proof the past is still with us.

Even in the Old Fort Lowell neighborhood. It's possible to remember a time not so long ago when the Chapel was the functional church for the largely Mexican and agrarian neighborhood. A time when beautiful brown-eyed babies came to services with their parents; a time when those who lived on the edge of poverty along the Rillito gathered here and shared a sense of church-centered life and community.