Ralph Adams Cram

The death of George Heins in 1907 effectively ended the contract of Heins and LaFarge with the Cathedral. Grant LaFarge continued supervision of the then parts of the Cathedral under construction. This ended with the completion of the crossing dome and the consecration of 1911. Ralph Adams Cram was appointed the consulting architect.

Bishop Henry Colman Potter was the force behind the selection of the initial design. He was attracted to the Byzantine/Romanesque/Gothic design, in part because it suggested internationalism and ecumenism. The foundation of that design, the enormous crossing, also appealed. It would be the Cathedral’s primary space, where large numbers would gather in a single body to see and hear.

From the very beginning, some members of the Cathedral corporation had favored a more purely Gothic style. After Bishop Potter’s death, criticism of the design had become more outspoken. Additionally, in the early 1900’s the style of the design’s popularity wasn’t what it was in the 1890’s.

Ralph Adams Cram was the county’s foremost expert on Neo-Gothic architecture. The Firm of Cram, Goodhue, and Ferguson was engaged in multiple church and collegiate projects at the time.

Transforming to Gothic

The main issue that Cram inherited was the proportions of the existing structure. The enormous crossing, the central element of Heins and LaFarge’s design, was 90 feet by 90 feet. When Cram told partner Bertram Goodhue that they might be getting involved in the Cathedral,

I wondered what in the world we could do if we were forced to adhere to the present foundations

– Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue

Using the crossing width as the determining element for the width of the nave and determining a length for the nave in order to have a proportional Gothic relationship to the existing structure, Cram proceeded to solve the problem. Cram writes: “The original building had been laid out on a system of squares, not with the oblong areas of a normal Gothic church, and naturally, since it was more or less Romanesque. This was fortunate since, in order to do no violence to what existed, this setting-out had to be continued and this implied sexpartite vaulting.”

Cram lengthened the church to 601 feet. Instead of building a traditional three aisle church consisting of a nave and two side aisles, he designed 146-foot-wide, five-aisle church.

The Problem Meets an Elegant Solution

Cram introduced smaller intermediate piers in the primary arcade of the nave. The piers of the nave alternate between 16 feet and 6 feet in diameter. Each of the slender piers is composed of 53 course of solid granite, and each course weighs 4 tons. The large pillars have a granite base and a granite interior shaft faced with limestone. He resolved the nave into a system of four great squares or double bays, rather than eight rectangular bays. He lifted the intermediate piers as well as the primary piers to an enormous height (nearly 100 feet) and then pushed back the clerestory to a secondary line of piers. The aisles in between were then lifted to the full height of the nave vault. All this achieved an unprecedented amplitude (double that of any medieval cathedral) as well as a dramatic height and a remarkable play of light and shadow.

Here then was a chance completely to differentiate this particular cathedral from all others of the Gothic mode, so not only was the interior worked out on a system of columns alternating with massive piers, but the buttresses were alternately single and double.

– Ralph Adams Cram

Cram continues…”Aisles had always been low, so that the clerestory came over the main arcade, with the result that great churches always seemed narrow and closely confined between crowding walls….here in New York the clerestory was pushed out to the line of the aisle walls, so giving a width of 100 feet between the containing walls, while the aisles themselves were raised in height to that of the nave, a greater elevation than occurs elsewhere in any Gothic Cathedral.”

French Gothic Influence

“Classical scale and detail of French Gothic became the inspirational influence and so, I suppose, the cathedral nave and west front are more French than anything else, though I still think it would be hard to find any instance of direct copying.”

Cram solved the design problems in quick order. However, construction waited for the funds to arrive.

Ralph Adams Cram – Supporter of Arts and Crafts

Cram, throughout his career, recognized the critical nature of craftspeople to carry out the final product. He sought out these special people in all areas, stained glass artists, wood carvers, sculptors and stone carvers.

Architecture by itself and without the cooperation of the other arts is almost helpless. It is true that architecture is the coordinating art, but the architect must be able to count on artists of every type to work with him in creating the finished product.

– Ralph Adams Cram

After the Nave

Finally in 1938, sufficient funds became available to proceed with the work of modifying the interior of the choir. With the interior of the nave completed, a temporary altar was moved into it and a temporary wall put up. The exterior of the Heins & LaFarge designed structure needed no modification. There were enough Gothic elements to flow into the new nave exterior. The ornate interior of that structure, however, characterized by byzantine domes and romanesque arches made for an uncomfortable transition to the majestic Gothic nave.

At the east end of the apse was a semi dome of red Guastavino structural tile that was to display a mosaic of Christ. Yellow-green Guastavino tile groined vaults surmounted the choir stalls. Cram’s renovation included replacing the semi-dome with a seven cell Gothic vault framing seven clerestory windows. Three quadripartite Gothic vaults replaced the glazed tile vaults.

The Choir modifications took three years. These changes created design elements that became sympathetic with the nave.

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• Have I A “Philosophy of Design”, Ralph Adams Cram, Pencil Points (magazine), Volume XIII, November 1932
• Strangers and Pilgrims: A Centennial History of the Laymen’s Club of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Sypher, F.J.
• Ralph Adams Cram, American Medievalist, Douglas Shand-Tucci
• Gotham Gothic: An Appreciation of Ralph Adams Cram, Thomas Fedorek