The stone mortared into place on September 29, 1982 was the cornerstone of the cathedral’s southwest tower. The date was the feast of St. Michael and All Angels or Michaelmas. It marked 41 years since construction on the cathedral had taken place. The stone cutting apprentices, whose numbers had swelled to about two dozen, had assembled an inventory of cut stone for the last three years. Some 2500 stones had been prepared and now was the time for these first stones to be set. The Very Rev. James P. Morton, dean of St. John the Divine noted that the first cornerstone for the cathedral had been laid in 1892 at the east end. The second, for the nave, was laid in 1925. Each formal cornerstone dedication has marked a significant phase of construction activity.
Cornerstone restarts construction
The cathedral had stopped building during World War II. Work was not resumed because the Episcopal Diocese felt that the erection of a lavish structure would be symbolically inappropriate until the poverty of its upper Manhattan neighborhood could be alleviated. Dean Morton, dean of the cathedral since 1973, realized that perhaps construction itself was the remedy. As a result if community residents were taught to build the cathedral themselves they could gain skills. Likewise this would knit together the cathedral and the community. The apprentices work under the master mason, James Bambridge, who said this of his charges:
All have learned faster than I would have expected – they are really more mature than the younger apprentices I have trained in England, and that makes all the difference.
-James Bambridge
The stone was a gift from Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kolleck. The Jewish Mayor and the Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore Jr., pledged to exchange limestone blocks for their building projects. First of all the “Jerusalem stone” will be the cornerstone of the southwest tower. The exchange stone, the “St. John the Divine stone”, cut in the stoneyard, will be set among the oldest paving stones of Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa. This is the traditional path to Calvary, which is in the process of restoration. The ceremony of the stones was held in January, 1981.
The Walk Across Amsterdam Ave
Aerialist Philippe Petit carried a silver trowel across Amsterdam Avenue on a high wire to Bishop Moore, who blessed the stone. Petit and the cathedral were not strangers. This story from The New Yorker: “Philippe Petit has been an artist-in-residence at the cathedral since 1980. He fell in love with the place when James Parks Morton, the cathedral’s charismatic and somewhat unorthodox Dean, invited the fledgling Big Apple Circus, with which Petit had appeared once or twice as a guest artist, to use the Synod House as its circus school for a few weeks. Petit told Morton he would like to do a high-wire walk inside the cathedral.
Morton, who knew about the association of cathedrals and tightrope walking in the Middle Ages, was all for it, but his trustees said no. (What if he fell?) Petit put up a cable anyway and did his walk. When he came down, the police arrested him for trespassing. They were taking him away in handcuffs when Dean Morton, who hadn’t witnessed the walk, appeared and told them to release the culprit. ‘He wasn’t trespassing,’ Morton told the cops. ‘He is an artist of this cathedral.’ Afterward, it seemed like such a good idea that Morton and Petit made it official.”
