Point Loma Theosophical Grounds (Lomaland)
Point Loma, San Diego, California, United States
The former Lomaland community, Katherine Tingley's Theosophical White City on the western tip of Point Loma from 1897 to 1942, whose Greek theatre, domed buildings, and landscaped grounds survive inside the private campus of Point Loma Nazarene University.
In 1897 Katherine Tingley, leader of the Theosophical Society, bought a headland at the far western edge of San Diego and laid the cornerstone for what she called the School for the Revival of the Lost Mysteries of Antiquity; by 1900 the Universal Brotherhood and Theosophical Society had moved its American headquarters there and opened the Raja Yoga Academy, a boarding school where hundreds of children lived in Lotus Houses, each learned an instrument, and the community's orchestra, by one account the first school orchestra in the United States, gave weekly concerts. The community built the first Greek theatre in North America in 1901, a theosophical university in 1919, and dozens of buildings under amethyst domes that shone offshore at night. Tingley died in 1929, the Depression hollowed the community out, and in 1942 the Theosophical Society sold the campus and moved to Covina; the site passed through a developer's failed housing plan to Balboa University in 1950 and became Point Loma Nazarene University in 1973.
What remains is genuinely visible but genuinely private. The Greek theatre still stands and is used by the university; Mieras Hall, the 1901 Spalding home with its restored amethyst dome, is the administration building; Cabrillo Hall and Pepper Tree Lane carry the Lomaland plan into the present campus. The Theosophical Society's headquarters is now in Pasadena, verified on its own site, so the hill holds the community's built memory rather than its living institution. This entry says that plainly: the grounds belong to a private university, access runs through the university's own visit programs rather than public heritage visiting, and the theosophical history is interpreted by historians and the university rather than by a resident community.
Visiting
Point Loma Nazarene University owns the campus: visits are arranged through the university's admissions visit programs and events, and no public heritage visiting hours exist. The historic features are viewable in photographs and from limited campus vantage points. The Theosophical Society (Pasadena) remains reachable at theosociety.org for archives and Theosophical University Press materials.
Photo: [via Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PL-amphitheater.jpg). The Greek theatre on the university campus.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories