Five years ago, we published the first blog post. For the first year and a half I maintained a schedule of a post every week, like a weekly newspaper column. My deadline occurred every Thursday. My goal was to use frequency to build awareness of the Divine Stone project and to reach the core group of stoneyard participants with the message that their wonderful story was important and was being told.
Apologies for those first posts being a little on the thin side. I wasn’t as much a researcher as a grabber of low-hanging fruit. As time went on, the research deepened and was enhanced by Robert F. Rodriguez’ images and writings. The free subscriber lists have grown beyond those immediately involved in the stoneyard. We thank them. It is a story that reaches a larger audience.
Last year we indicated it was time to begin a new phase in the work and that it was time to start weaving these snapshots of stories into a cohesive draft manuscript. That has begun. You may recall we plan three parts to the story, the major construction periods.
Part One – The Dean Morton Era (1972-1997)
Part Two – Bishop Potter and Heins & LaFarge (1892-1911)
Part. Three – Bishop Manning and Ralph Adams Cram (1921-1941)
Part Two is written in draft form. I started there because it was the smallest section and I could see how to bring blog posts into a narrative form and the challenges that it might pose. The writing for Part One is now underway.
Going Forward
Blog posts will continue, although less frequent due to manuscript writing tasks. We will be reaching out to the cutters, carvers and setters from the modern stoneyard to develop more information about them and that era. For those men and women, please help us tell the best story.
L-R, Tom Fedorek, Robert F. Rodriguez
Last fall I had an opportunity to meet Tom Fedorek, Senior Guide and our book’s co-author Robert F. Rodriguez at the Cathedral for a short but meaningful walk-around. Robert and I adjourned to meet about the book and look at his well-documented collection of photos. In addition to his own work, Robert secured Mary Bloom’s Cathedral images from her estate and secured Martha Cooper’s cooperation to use her images. Martha spent 3 years documenting the work on the Portal of Paradise. Stephanie Azzarone, journalist, author and editor, joined us at the meeting and has graciously agreed to work with us.
This year, through Mark Saxe, various publications and websites have reprinted blog posts and links to the blog, spreading the story. Mark recently brought this quote to our attention. It will stay with us.
” There is no one not better off having spent time in the presence of stone” –
West Front design from Ralph Adams Cram 1925 showing the elevation for the 8-foot statues of the Twelve Apostles in buttress niches. It is the same elevation as the nave triforium on the interior.
If you look up at this elevation today you won’t see twelve statues, but you will see two on the west front. Tom Fedorek, Senior Guide, pointed them out to me last fall and indicated their names, St. Andrew and St.Philip.
The circle area indicates two of the apostles, L-R St. Andrew and St. Philip
The statues begin on the east face of the north tower, proceed to the north face, then march across the west front and are supposed to wrap around the south tower and end on the east facade of the south tower. Only 5 of the Apostles were sculpted and carved.
Tom has graciously sent us the names, images and locations as well as the iconographic attributes that identify these five apostles. They are eight feet tall, 3 1/2 tons and are of Indiana limestone.
North Tower, East Face, St. Peter, the keys. – Image Tom Fedorek
St. John, North Tower, North Face, beardless, chalice. – Image Tom Fedorek
North Tower, North face, St. James, pilgrim’s staff, scallop shell. – Image Tom Fedorek
St. Andrew, North Tower, West Face, X-shaped cross. – Image Tom Fedorek
North Tower, West Face, St. Philip, T-shaped or tau cross. – Image Tom Fedorek
The Sculptor and The Carver
We have not found documentation verifying the five apostles’ sculptor and carver. John Angel worked on the north tower. His sculptures appear on the porch, the portal of the martyrs. He also sculpted the tympanum and the trumeau featuring St. Peter. The Ardolinos, brothers and cousins, carved his models. The Ardolinos carved most of these in situ in the 1930s. The figures of the five Apostles appear to be studio carved and then placed in the buttress niches. For now, the attribution points towards John Angel and the Ardolinos.
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A Guide To The Cathedral Church Of Saint John The Divine In The City of New York, originally compiled by Edward Hagaman Hall, L.H.D, published by the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral Church, 1965, Seventeenth Edition.
The Living Cathedral, St. John the Divine, A History and Guide, Howard E. Quirk, 1993, Crossroad, New York.
Senior Guide, Tom Fedorek, The Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Leonard Peltier, circa 1985, AC# 449: American Indian Movement photograph collection, National Museum of the American Indian Archives.
On January 19, 2025, President Joe Biden commuted Leonard Peltier’s sentence. He will be free to serve the remainder of his sentence at home under home confinement. Leonard has served 50 years of two consecutive life sentences in various institutions. His home will be with the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota. For forty years, there has been a connection between the Cathedral and Leonard Peltier’s eagle.
Leonard’s sentence, was the result of a shoot-out near the Pine Ridge reservation in June of 1975, where two FBI agents were killed. Leonard, who has always maintained his innocence, was convicted of these killings. Many in law enforcement fought against any type of clemency for Peltier. Many others, including the Dalai Lama, Pope Francis and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark fought for it, as did many human rights organizations worldwide and Dean James Parks Morton. We are reminded that there are always three sides to every story.
Dean James Parks Morton – Image Mary Bloom
In 1985, Dean Morton assembled a group supporting Leonard’s freedom at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Among them was Steve Robideau, President of the American Indian Movement, Chief Billy Redwing Tayac and civil rights attorney William Kunstler.
In this photo, Steve Robideau, Dean Morton, Chief Billy Redwing Tayac and standing William Kunstler. January, 1985. – Image courtesy Pamela Morton
The Carving
Leading up to the gathering, Dean Morton approached Master Carver Nick Fairplay and asked him to carve something representing Leonard to go on the Cathedral. Nick had recently carved an eagle to go up on the Southwest Tower and was about to begin on another creature for the same size stone to be near it.
Detail of the first eagle carving on a canopy stone carved by Nicholas Fairplay on June 3, 1985. – Image Robert F. Rodriguez
Fairplay decided on a second eagle to go with the first, but this time with the face of Leonard Peltier. He was provided a photograph and went to work.
This is an eagle carving with the head of Leonard Peltier. Nicholas Fairplay’s carving is on a canopy stone, seen in a niche on June 3, 1985. Image Robert F. Rodriguez
Nick Fairplay with Peltier Eagle. Image courtesy of Pamela Morton
Fairplay showing Peltier Eagle to Arlene and Steve Robideau for the first time. Image courtesy of Pamela Morton
The Forum concluded with a ceremony at the altar of the Cathedral featuring Native American customs and traditional Anglican rituals.
L-R, Chief Billy Redwing Tayac, Steve Robideau Tayac, Steve Robideau, Dean James Morton preparing the bundles at the altar. January 6, 1985. – Image courtesy of Pamela Morton
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White House Press Release, The White House, January 20, 2025, Statement from President Joe Biden.
With Companions for the Journey, James Parks Morton, An Annotated Memoir, Pamela Morton and Polly Barton, 2021.
Special thanks to Pamela Morton for the many images of the Cathedral events and Nick Fairplay’s involement.
Thank you to Divine Stone co-author, Robert F. Rodriguez, for the historic images of the canopy stones.
This is a closeup view of the west face string course seen with a 600 mm telephoto lens on January 22, 2024.
MYSTERY OF THE MISSING CARVING ON THE WEST FRONT
The Cathedral’s Board of Trustees had envisioned that both towers, St. Peter’s on the north and the St. Paul bell tower on the south side, could be completed by 1994 – only 12 years after construction started. That plan came to an abrupt halt in the early 1990s, with only one-third of the south bell tower completed.
In 1988, work on the south tower was moving along steadily when the string course was set on the Cathedral’s west façade facing busy Amsterdam Avenue.
Although it offers a selection of whimsical animal carvings, the gallery is full of “dark” carvings and an unsolved mystery.
Among the animal designs, a crab, perhaps representing the Zodiac sign Cancer, seems about to clamber up the tower. Its carver is unknown.
Closeup of a rooster carved by D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon, seen on Nov. 11, 1986.
Two other animal figures also appear on this facade. One is a rooster with a regal coxcomb and round circular tail feathers carved by D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon. The other carving, by Nicholas Fairplay, may have been inspired by a children’s nursery rhyme. A cat-like creature holds a bow and fiddle, and one can almost hear “Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle, The cow jumped over the moon.”
This is a closeup of a cat-like animal playing a fiddle on a cornice stone carved by Nicholas Fairplay, photographed in October, 1988.
A mystery emerges on a stone towards the south end of the string course gallery. One block has no carving at all. Where a raised foliage or some other carving would appear, the stone face is smooth across its entire width. It’s possible that the original instructions on the job ticket were missing or misread so the raised section on the block for carving was not cut to specs.
Missing cornice stone carving between the crab and the foliage carving
Master Mason and tower construction supervisor Stephen Boyle cannot provide any explanation. “I think it got missed somehow.” So the stone was set in its incomplete state.
The remaining cornice carvings take on a somber and gloomy tone.
Geraldo Perez, right, and an unidentified summer architecture program student check the mortar around Amy Brier’s cornice stone of a skull, the Angel of Death, seen in August, 1988.
A skull wearing a shroud depicts the Angel of Death. According to Amy Brier, “I like the human skull, it could also be connected to my mother dying a few months before I started working at the Cathedral, I was thinking about mortality and death, in that sort of mood. (I was) also influenced by Gothic depictions of the devil, evil, death.”
This is a closeup of a vampire bat by Amy Brier seen in situ in October, 1988.
Amy also carved a Vampire bat with a broad leaf-shaped nose, long pointed ears and a wide mouth ready for sucking blood.
This is a side view of two cornice stones photographed on Nov. 14, 1988. The unfinished block on the left was carved by Ruben Gibson while Dennis Reed carved the moon-faced grotesque on the right.
Two side-by-side carvings near the north buttress column have a surreal quality to them.
Dennis Reed uses a pneumatic chisel to round out an eye of his moon-faced carving, photographed July 11, 1988.
Dennis Reed, a protégé of Ruben Gibson, carved a moon-faced man. It shows a figure with thin wide lips, a broad nose and powerful hands beneath his chin. Dennis likens the tower’s construction to “a temple that constantly needs to be worked on. It’s a metaphor for a spiritual life.”
This is a closeup of a moon-faced figure carved by Dennis Reed, seen in October, 1988.
The adjoining stone was carved by Ruben Gibson, who worked at the Stoneyard Institute for eight years, where he rose from apprentice to stonecutter to carver to lead carver.
Edgar Reyes, front, and Joseph Chifriller, left, place concrete blocks behind the cornice course on the northwest corner of St. Paul’s tower in August, 1988. The grotesque on the left was Ruben Gibson’s last work. The moon- faced caricature on the right was carved by Dennis Reed.
This is the last stone Ruben worked on before he became too weak to handle a mallet, in January 1988. His life was cut short when he died of kidney failure at the age of 39 in the AIDS ward at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center.
This is a closeup of Ruben Gibson’s last work, an unfinished cornice stone seen in situ on the west face of St. Paul’s tower in October, 1988.
It is an eerie work. A demon seems to be emerging from the raw stone, its metamorphosis halted by its creator’s death. Ruben would not have minded that, his friends said. He told them that the cathedral, like spiritual growth, can never be completed.
It is so appropriate that Ruben’s unfinished work is set on this unfinished tower.
This is a closeup of Ruben Gibson’s unfinished carving seen in situ in October, 1988. To the far right is a moon-faced carving by Dennis Reed.
– NW corner, Green Man by Nicholas Fairplay
– Unfinished carving by Ruben Gibson
– Moon-faced man by Dennis Reed
– Foliage
– Rooster by D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon
– Cat with fiddle by Nicholas Fairplay
– Foliage
– Vampire bat by Amy Brier
– Crab, carver unknown
– Uncarved cornice stone
– Foliage
– Angel of Death by Amy Brier
– SW corner, foliage by Nicholas Fairplay
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New York Times, Jan, 29, 1989. Stone Carver’s Magnificent Obsession
All images are those of Robert F. Rodriguez, photojournalist and artist-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
A NEWBY STONECARVER’S FIRST CARVING SHINES ON THE EAST FACE
The bright morning sun fully illuminates an array of cornice carvings on the east face of St. Paul’s tower.
This is a closeup view of the cornice course and other architectural details on the tower’s east face, on January 22, 2024.
On the far left of the gallery is a fierce-looking dragon, unlike the shy dragon residing on the north face. Whereas the latter appears docile and gentle, the flying reptile on this wall could almost be a miniature Targaryen dragon from Games of Thrones.
Acting as a bookend to the angry dragon, on the far right side of the line of carvings, is a block very different in style to almost all the other string course carvings. The identity of the carver remains unclear.
A cornice stone showing a man with a flat top hairdo eating a sandwich is seen in situ on the east side of the tower on July 26, 1988. The carver is unknown.
It shows a man nonchalantly eating a sandwich. The chisel marks are rough, almost unfinished in some areas, a marked contrast to the highly defined and smooth carvings surrounding him.
There are some interesting backstories to the stones attributed to specific carvers.
Ruben Gibson draws an audience of day camp children while he works on a foliage design for a corner cornice stone in August, 1986.
In August, 1986, almost two years before the string course was set, Ruben Gibson was working on a corner cornice stone which has carvings on two sides. The tranquilty of the carving shed was suddenly shattered by a group of young day campers who were visiting the Stoneyard. Peering through the low open windows, the youngsters were quickly mesmerized by Ruben’s work and gazed intently as he continued carving the sinewy leaves in a foliage design.
Angel Escobar carves a flower gnome face surrounded by petals on a cornice stone in May, 1988.
Angel Escobar contributed a sweet carving of a flower nymph emerging from a flower, its slanted eyes and broad nose poking out from the surrounding petals. Angel was a high school dropout who says his life had been “saved” by the Stoneyard program. He completed his four-year apprenticeship and worked both in the cutting and carving sheds, where he liked to create fantastic creatures.
This is a view of part of the cornice course on the east elevation after setting in August, 1988. Angel Escobar carved the floral gnome on the far right.
A carving by Nicholas Fairplay shows an unusual creature using his one giant foot to shade his face. Monopods are mythological beings with a single, large foot extending from a leg centered in the middle of their bodies. The Greeks called them “shade-footed ones” because when it was hot they would lie on their backs on the ground and seek shade under the great size of their foot.
This carving by Nicholas Fairplay of a creature using his one giant foot to shade his face is photographed Nov. 11, 1986.
Nicholas worked at Westminster Abbey and came to the Cathedral as Head Carver to teach carving to the most promising cutters in the apprentice program.
Several years earlier D’Ellis “Jeep” Kincannon carved a Green Man for a buttress gablet label stop. The Green Man is an ancient mythological character adopted by Gothic stone carvers and seen in churches and cathedrals all over Europe. In Celtic mythology, the Green Man represents the lord of the forest and the patron of animals and fertility. He is mainly a symbol of untamed nature.
Edgar Reyes, left, checks the alignment on the green woman cornice stone carved by Jessica Aujero, far right, and set on the east face in August, 1988.
For the string course Jessica Aujero Lowrie, newly arrived to the Cathedral carving program, set out not only to carve a “Green Woman” but also to make it a self-portrait. Jessica recently confided this was her first carving at the Stoneyard. After extensive research and numerous sketches, she worked on her clay model.
Jessica Aujero begins to shape her clay model for a Green Woman carving — a medieval forest spirit — for a cornice stone on April 21, 1988.
So, when she tentatively started to carve, she kept a mirror nearby for reference.
Jessica Aujero carves a Green Woman, a medieval forest spirit, on a cornice stone in May, 1988. She turned the carving into a self portrait, keeping a mirror above the stone to accurately carve her features onto the stone.
But, not content with that, she also kept her clay model behind the mirror. And, to be extra sure of capturing her image properly, she added the sketch behind the clay model behind the mirror behind the carving.
Jessica Aujero carves a Green Woman on a cornice stone in May, 1988. She turned the carving into a self portrait. Behind the mirror is her working clay model and above that her preliminary sketches.
She got it!
Carvings across the east façade string course, left to right:
Carvings across the east façade string course, left to right:
– NW corner, foliage by Joseph Kincannon
– Dragon with head down, carver unknown
– Foliage
– Foliage
– Foliage
– Foliage
– Long tailed creature by Joseph Kincannon
– Forest gnome by Angel Escobar
– Foliage by Nicholas Fairplay
– Monopod creature by Nicholas Fairplay
– Green Woman by Jessica Aujero Lowrie
– Sandwich guy, carver unknown
– NE corner, foliage by Ruben Gibson
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All images are those of Robert F. Rodriguez, photojournalist and artist-in-residence at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
