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2131 Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City -
The West front and great bronze doors |
Located in
Manhattan's
Morningside Heights neighborhood, on
Amsterdam Avenue, the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine is the cathedral of the
Episcopal Diocese of New York. Designed in 1888 and begun in 1892, the cathedral has undergone radical stylistic changes, from a
Byzantine Revival-
Romanesque Revival style to a
Gothic Revival style. It remains unfinished, so it is often nicknamed St. John the Unfinished. There is a dispute about whether this cathedral or
Liverpool Cathedral is the world's largest Anglican cathedral and church.
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2132 Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City -
The West front |
In 1887 Bishop
Henry Codman Potter of the Episcopal Diocese of New York called for a cathedral to rival the Catholic
St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. After an open competition, a design by the New York firm of
George Lewis Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge in a Byzantine-Romanesque style was accepted. The walls were built around eight massive 130-ton, 15-m granite columns, the largest in the world. After the large central dome made of
Guastavino tile was completed in 1909, the original
Byzantine-
Romanesque design was changed to a
Gothic design.
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2133 Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
in New York City: 1. Completed Cathedral
in the vision of architects George Lewis
Heins & Cristopher Grant La Farge
2. Completed Cathedral in the vision of
architect Ralph Adams Cram |
Increasing friction after the premature death of Heins in 1907, fueled by a preference among some trustees for a less Romanesque and more Gothic style for the cathedral, ultimately led the trustees to dismiss the surviving architect, C. Grant LaFarge, and hire the noted Gothic Revival architect
Ralph Adams Cram. The result is that the Cathedral reflects a mixture of architectural styles. The Cathedral was opened end-to-end for the first time on November 30, 1941, a week before the bombing of
Pearl Harbor.
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| 2134 Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City - The West front 1 |
Without copying any one historical model, and without compromising its authentic stone-on-stone construction by using modern steel girders, Saint John the Divine is an example of the 13th century
High Gothic style of northern France. It has 186m in length, and the nave ceiling reaches 37.7m high. It is the longest Gothic nave in the U.S., at 70m. At the west end of the nave, installed by stained glass artist
Charles Connick and constructed out of 10,000 pieces of glass, is the largest rose window in the U.S.
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2135 Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
in New York City - The West front 2 |
Seven chapels radiating from the ambulatory behind the choir are each in a distinctive nationalistic style. These chapels are known as the "Chapels of the Tongues", and they are devoted to
St. Ansgar (venerated as an apostle to the Scandinavian countries),
St. Boniface (apostle of the Germans),
St. Columba (patron of Ireland and Scotland); St. Savior (Holy Savior - devoted to immigrants from the east, especially Africa and Asia),
St. Martin of Tours (patron of the French),
St. Ambrose (patron of Milan), and
St. James (patron of Spain).
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2136 Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City -
The Great Choir and Sanctuary |
In the center is the large, raised high altar, behind which is a wrought iron enclosure containing the Gothic style tomb of the Right Reverend Horatio Potter. Later Episcopal bishops of New York, and other notables of the church, are entombed in side chapels. On the grounds, toward the south, are several buildings (including a synod hall and the
Cathedral School of St. John the Divine), and a Biblical garden, as well as a large bronze work of public art by
Greg Wyatt, known as the
Peace Fountain, which has been both strongly praised and strongly criticized.
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2137 Cathedral of Saint John the Divine
in New York City - The Peace Fountain |
The great west bronze doors, designed between 1927 and 1931 by
Henry Wilson, were made in Paris by
Barbedienne, who also cast the
Statue of Liberty, and were installed in 1936. The sequence of 48 relief panels presents scenes from the Old and New Testaments and the Apocalypse. The doors, the last of the only four produced in his lifetime by Henry Wilson, are on a monumental scale, measuring each 5.5m × 3.7m, and weighing 3 tons. Wilson died in France, in 1934, shortly after finishing the design but before the doors were installed.
