Category: Divine Stone

“We are all Stardust,” so writes author William Bryan Logan, quoting his friend Jim Morton. Logan additionally acknowledges Dean Morton for making that book possible when he invited Logan to become a writer-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Speaking of Dean Morton:

“He has been an example to me of work pursued tirelessly and with deep good cheer.”

– William Bryant Logan

That book, Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, is part theology, part philosophy and all science about our planet. He writes about stone, rocks, silt, sand, and clay in a way that makes you want to go into your backyard and look closer and smell it. Wind and water and billions of years write the history of our dirt. Whether you are a quarryman, farmer, or clay artist, you will want to read his inspiring thoughts. The “Stardust” alludes to the fact that everything on earth, including us, is from stardust.

From his office on the triforium level, to his friendship with Jim and Pamela Morton he spent the better part of a decade at the Cathedral. One of the essays is about the foundations of cathedrals. Therefore it provides a great deal of insight into the beginnings of the construction of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Almost everyone likes to look at the vaulted spaces and the arches and buttresses. They all admire the windows, stonework and the carvings. Admiration is rarely a word that is used regarding the foundations.

Dig it and be Done

It looked like a simple matter, writes Logan. Beneath the shallow overburden of loose soil should have been solid metamorphic stone. Excavation continued to reveal twisted and fractured schist. The church’s elders were more than concerned. They were supposed to be building a grand cathedral, not digging an endless hole. Then, the industrialist J.P. Morgan wrote a blank check. He said “Dig it and be done.” That check covered what in today’s dollars would be $20 million.

Across the street, St. Luke’s Hospital began its foundation dig at the same time as the Cathedral. The Hospital was built and dedicated before the Cathedral’s foundation was done. The dig went down 72 feet in spots before bedrock was found. Finding that bedrock was good because as Logan indicates the unfinished Cathedral weighs in at 253,000 tons. “The weightiest Gothic undertaking ever”.

Stardust to Dirt Author

William Bryant Logan is the author of Sprout Lands, Oak, Air and Dirt, the last of which was made into an award-winning documentary. He is on the faculty of the New York Botanical Garden as well as a regular garden writer for the New York Times. His informative web site can be found here

• Special thanks to the artist and gallery owner Betsy Williams for leading us to this impressive book. Her site is here.

As the foundations of the cathedral started to come up, the outline of the Crypt began to take shape. The arches shown here are below grade and form spaces in the Crypt. The Crypt follows the Heins & Lafarge plan above it. Basically, it encompassed the space of the Choir, Chancel, Sanctuary, Apse and the seven Apsidal Chapels. In later years, artists-in-residence used studio spaces in the Crypt. The spaces below the Chapels carried their names. Gregg Wyatt, who created the Peace Fountain used one as his studio for years. Almost all of the space is now storage.

The Crypts’ vaulted ceiling was the Guastavino Company’s first job at the Cathedral. They installed a fireproof ceiling of Akoustilith tile of Guastavino’s design. The tile had significant absorptive qualities. Therefore the congregation could hear the readers and preachers. The construction of the “temporary” dome over the crossing will showcase more significant work by Guastavino.

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Finally, on Sunday, January 8, 1899, the Crypt, accommodating a congregation of 500 persons, opened for services. Above it, the eight massive columns were still at the quarry. The keystone of the Great Eastern Arch was still ten years away. These services continued without interruption for the next 12 years. On the morning of April 19, 1911 the last service was held, with the opening of the Choir and the Crossing.

The Tiffany Chapel

The Tiffany Company designed and built an amazing chapel for the 1893 Worlds Fair in Chicago. As a result, it won numerous medals and was one of the most visited at the event. Mrs. Celia Hermoine Wallace purchased the chapel and gifted it to the Cathedral in memory of her son. It consisted of an altar, reredos, font, lecturn and five stained glass windows. Above all, the altar contained 150,000 squares of glass set in mosaic. The top of the altar and the retable were Carrara marble. The medallions in front were mother of pearl. The central shield contained settings of sapphires, topazes and pieces of pearl. The reredos was of iridescent glass mosaic.

• Photo – Museum of the City of New York
• Photos – Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. Manhattan: Amsterdam Avenue – Cathedral Parkway

The Building Committee of the Cathedral announced its intention not only to complete the choir structure, but also to continue to the westward and construct the Crossing. The providing of necessary funds would accomplish the three new arches and cover for the crossing.

The pillars being in place, the next step will be the erection of three more arches. They will be precisely the same as the great eastern arch already erected. These four arches complete the square of the crossing. The Belmont Chapel is about complete and the Chapel of St. Columba has started. The Committee needs an additional $500,000 beyond funds on hand and other commitments. Regarding the Crossing area, The Building Committee of the Board of Trustees said the following:

“It is estimated that $200,000 would complete the choir. If finished it would easily accommodate a comparatively small number of worshippers. It is in the judgement of the committee, highly desirable that, in addition to the great stone arch now standing, there should be three similar ones needed to enclose the ‘crossing.’ Were the ground thus bounded to be temporarily roofed over and walled in, we should have an interior capable of accommodating from four to five thousand worshippers.”

– The Building Committee

Completing the Arches

All of the piers and columns for the next three arches came up from bedrock in an orderly way. Granite blocks for these structures kept arriving at the site. The western arch was the first to complete.

The North Arch was the next to complete

Voussoirs on the arches and buttresses

Keep in mind, when Heins & La Farge designed the arches, they were to support a massive lantern and tower. The lantern would fill the crossing with light from large windows. With that in mind, the arches would need to be quite massive. Arch construction depends essentially on a wedge. If a series of wedge-shaped blocks, ones in which the upper edge is wider than the lower edge, are set flank to flank, the result is an arch. Voussoir is the term for these blocks on both the arches and the buttresses.

Notice the staggered joints on the voussoirs that are side by side. A row of two voussoirs is flanked on each side by three voussoirs. This design further strengthens the arch.

Additionally there are three sets of these voussoirs front to back to further create these massive arches. Numbering the stone determines its exact location. Each voussoir must be precisely cut so that it presses firmly against the surface of neighboring blocks and conducts loads uniformly. The pressure downward on an arch has the effect of forcing the voussoirs together instead of apart. These stresses also tend to squeeze the blocks outward radially. Loads divert these outward forces downward to exert a diagonal force called thrust. These forces will cause the arch to collapse if it is not properly buttressed. Therefore the vertical supports upon which an arch rests must be massive enough to buttress the thrust and conduct it into the foundation.

Voussoir

The word is a stonemasonry term borrowed in Middle English from French verbs connoting a “turn”. Each wedge-shaped voussoir turns aside the thrust on to the supports. Voussoir arches distribute weight efficiently, and take maximum advantage of the compressive strength of stone.

• Photo Credits – All photos from the Irma and Paul Milstein Division of the United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. Manhattan: Amsterdam Avenue – Cathedral Parkway

Maybe you don’t read blueprints very well. Maybe two dimensional perspective sketches aren’t quite good enough. Well how about a very large scale model of the Cathedral that you can walk inside? Oh yes, now you see it. That is what Heins and La Farge created so that there was no mistaking what their design would look like.

From the December 1900 issue of Carpentry and Building Journal, comes this article. The finished model was displayed in the Leake & Watts building lobby on the Grounds.

“We understand that arrangements have been made for a public exhibition this winter of a complete model of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, now in progress of erection on Cathedral Heights, New York City. The model will be of plaster supported on wood and iron frame work, with sheets of matting for the purpose of keeping the walls firm. The model will be about 50 feet by 25 feet in plan and 35 feet high. It is said that there will be room for 100 or more people to walk inside, and that the architects, Heins and LaFarge, have worked upon this model for nearly two years. The model will be exhibited on the site of the cathedral, and probably small fee will be charged.”

This view is of the interior of the model. It is looking towards the Altar past the Choir area from the future Crossing. The work is highly detailed inside and out.

• Carpentry and Building Journal, December 1900
• All Photos – Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, Local History and Genealogy, The New York Public Library. 1900. Manhattan: Amsterdam Avenue – Cathedral Parkway