OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Father Junipero Serra founded the Mission San Carlos Borromeo was dedicated in 1797. Architetural historian Marcus Whiffen noted that the construction on this stone church was began in 1793. (Other sources sometimes indicate it to have been 1795.) He credited the stone mason Manuel Estevan Ruiz as the probable designer. Whiffen observed: "It would seem that Ruiz, if he was the designer, knew the work of Francisco Antonio Guerrero y Torres....In the facade the combination of classical doorway and stellar claraboya is reminiscent of Guerrero's Pocito Chapel of 1779." (See Marcus Whiffen, American Architecture, Volume 1, 1607-1860, [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983], p. 49.)

Renovation efforts, paid in part by Mrs. Leland Stanford, started in 1884. Mission Carmel's renovation initiated a process of self-appraisal within California, as the state's citizens increasingly sought to form a cohesive historical narrative and cultural identity to present to the rest of the "civilized" world. Subsequent restoration efforts occurred in 1924 and 1931;

The church was ruined during the course of the nineteenth century;

PCAD id: 12717