Granite Cross and Diocesan Coat of Arms – Image New York Times – November 27, 1964
After Bishop Manning (1921-1946) opened the completed nave and the renovated choir, the start of the U.S. involvement in WWII effectively ended construction. So many workers enlisted in the military. This left the west front towers and the transepts uncompleted. Additionally, there remained unfinished much of the carving embellishments on the west front of the Cathedral.
Manning’s successor, Bishop Charles K. Gilbert (1947-1950) was in an environment where people’s attention moved from the war to the domestic scene. From the Laymen’s Club history we have this… “At the end of the Second World War, thousands of young veterans came home to settle down and bring up families, most of them moved to the suburbs. For the Episcopal Diocese of New York the prevailing changes meant growing suburban congregations and new suburban parishes, as well as shrinking city congregations, together with closing and consolidating city parishes.
The Cathedral’s Changing Neighborhood
“By the 1950s, the urban church found itself involved in mission-type work at every level. At the same time, the funding formerly from wealthy urban parishioners was now centered in the suburbs.” In 1950 upon the death of Bishop Gilbert, Bishop Horace W. B. Donegan (1950-1972) became the head of the diocese. He stated that the Cathedral would…
… not be built until the stresses of our city be ceased.
– Bishop Donegan
Nevertheless, during the Donegan years, certain additions were made. One of these was a four-and-a-half ton granite cross at the apex of the front gable over the central portal of the west front.
The Gable Cross, 1964 -Image courtesy of the archives of the Episcopal Diocese of New York.
The cross is 14 feet tall and it was cut from an eight ton block of granite. It was cut and carved by the New York firm of Rochette and Parzini. They were a sculpting, sculptural enlargement, stone carving and modeling firm founded in 1904.
The Diocesan Coat of Arms
At the time the cross was made, Rochette and Parzini was engaged to carve the Diocesan Coat of Arms. The Indiana limestone slab was placed on the Cathedral in 1924. Mario Tommasi, one of the few stone workers remaining in the city in the 1960s, is shown carving the Arms of the See of New York. Eighty feet above Amsterdam Avenue, the carving took two months. It is between the shields of the city of New York and the Cathedral Church.
Mario Tomassi of the firm of Rochette & Parzini in 1964 – New York Times archives, Image Carl T. Gosset Jr.
Mr. Tommasi, a stocky 59 year old at the time of the carving, is a native of Carrara in northern Italy. Stone carving has been a Tommasi family trade. He began his work in his father’s shop at 15 in the Tuscan town famed for the quality of its marble. He speaks of marble with reverence. When Mr. Tommasi came to this country in 1926 he was one of six stone carvers, working for the Piccirilli Brothers, who worked on the marble statue of Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial in Washington.
On the scaffold with him is a full size plaster cast, eight feet tall by six feet wide. The cast was made from a clay model at Rochette & Parzini from a drawing provided by Canon Edward Nason West.
Model for Diocesan Seal – Image courtesy of Wayne Kempton, Cathedral Archives
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Strangers & Pilgrim’s, A Centennial History of the Laymen’s Club, Francis J. Sypher, Jr.
The New York Times, November 27, 1964, Stone Carver’s Perch is 80 feet Aloft at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine,Page 30
The New York Times, Donegan Dedicates Granite Cross, August 26, 1964 Page 41
