Old baptismal font, San Gabriel Mission, California, circa 1910

About this postcard

View through a thick adobe arch into a small mission room, where a large copper or bronze basin rests on a white plaster pedestal before a wooden wainscot panel and a framed painting of a saint; a small altar with a candle stands at the left and brick paving covers the floor. The caption identifies it as the old baptismal font of Mission San Gabriel Arcángel, the fourth of the Spanish California missions, founded in 1771 by Father Junípero Serra and his companions near present-day Los Angeles. The mission's church and its surviving furnishings are among the best-known relics of the Spanish colonial period in California.