The Cornerstone – Part 1 -Laying the Cornerstone

(This is a continuing series of articles by Tom Fedorek, Senior Guide at the Cathedral. They explore significant historic and unusual stones in the Cathedral. – RM)

The sky was crystalline and the air frigid on the Feast of St. John, December 27, 1892, the day appointed for the laying of the Cathedral’s cornerstone. But inside the vast cruciform tent on the northeast quadrant of the Cathedral’s site, warmth, illumination, and music were provided by steam radiators, Edison light bulbs, and an organ supplemented by a brass choir and harp. Above the tent, a blue silk banner bearing the arms of the Diocese of New York wafted in the breeze. The hundreds of invited guests filled the seats well before the start of the service.

All eyes were on the platform in the center of the tent. There sat the cornerstone of Quincy granite, four feet and four inches square, incised with a cross and inscribed: I.H.S. St. John’s Day, December XXVII, A.D. 1892. Alongside the stone sat a wooden mallet and beside the mallet, a trowel of gold-streaked ebony with silver mountings, crafted by Tiffany & Co. and inscribed: Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation (Is. 28:16). 

The cables that would lower the stone into place were hanging from the derrick above. Beneath the platform, the foundation’s massive granite blocks lay atop the bedrock in anticipation of the setting of the cornerstone.

At three o’clock, the procession of three hundred clergy and dignitaries entered the tent, having donned their vestments in the old Leake & Watts orphanage building. For the next two hours, hymns were sung, psalms chanted, scripture proclaimed. Melville Fuller, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, read the epistle. The Bishop of Albany, William Doane, preached the sermon. A seventy-voice choir sang an anthem composed especially for the occasion.

The only glitch occurred when four trustees came forward to collect the offering only to find only three alms basins at hand. The fourth trustee, undaunted, passed his silk top hat to gather the greenbacks that were then cascaded upon a golden platter atop the cornerstone. The collection totaled $20,000, an amount insufficient to cover the cost of the elaborate ceremony – a portent of the funding shortfalls that lay ahead.

The late December daylight was fading as Bishop Potter mounted the platform accompanied by J.P. Morgan, a Cathedral trustee and its most generous benefactor, David H. King, the building contractor, and architect George L. Heins (whose partner, Grant La Farge, was conspicuous by his absence).

Cement was spread on the stone. With the point of the trowel, the bishop traced a cross in the cement at each corner. The derrick then lowered the stone into place. Standing before the stone, the bishop exclaimed: “In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen” – striking the stone with the wooden mallet as he named each person of the Trinity – and continuing: 

I lay the cornerstone of a church to be here builded under the name of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine: and to be devoted in the service of Almighty God as a house of prayer for all people in accordance with the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

The Harper’s Weekly account of the ceremony expressed an optimism that was doubtless shared by those who attended the ceremony:
This cathedral will not linger in completion as long as the Old World churches did … The last work on the lofty spire will probably be done before the young architects who have designed the cathedral will have advanced to middle age.

Those who went home that day confident that they would be greeting the twentieth century with a brand-new cathedral would be disappointed when it arrived eight years later, as shown by the photo below, taken a month before the turn of the century. 

The summer after the cornerstone ceremony, the excavation commenced and quickly hit springs and soft stone instead of bedrock schist. There was talk of starting over elsewhere on the site, though some feared it would be “unpropitious” now that the cornerstone was in place. The cost of the excavation absorbed the entire building fund. J.P. Morgan donated $500,000 to “get the cathedral out of the hole,” as he famously put it. Once the above-ground construction was underway, monolithic columns fractured into duoliths, funding ran dry, and workers went on strike.

Notwithstanding Harper’s prognostication, architect George Heins was already well into middle age when he died unexpectedly in 1907. His death left La Farge to struggle alone as the project, plagued by multiple setbacks, ran catastrophically over budget and behind schedule. Bishop Potter died in 1908. His funeral had to be held in the crypt because the choir was still unfinished, the crossing roofless, and the nave and transepts not even begun. His successor, David Greer, would preside over the consecration in 1911.

La Farge did not attend the consecration. Shortly afterward, he was dismissed and the original design abandoned. Today, only the kaleidoscopic marble and ceramic floors in the choir and sanctuary suggest what might have been had Heins & La Farge been able to realize their vision of a dazzling Byzantinesque interior, while passages of unfaced masonry betray the corner-cutting occasioned by evaporating funds.

Ralph Adams Cram took over from La Farge. One of his first assignments was to complete the seven chapels, of which only two were standing. He designed the Chapel of St. Martin himself and farmed out the remaining four to other architects: St. Ambrose to Carrère & Hastings; St. James, St. Boniface, and St. Ansgar to his fellow neo-Gothicist, Henry Vaughn.

The erection of the northern chapels swallowed the section of the wall with the cornerstone. Today, it sits high above the floor of the crypt of the Chapel of St. Ansgar. The stone and its inscription are only partially visible.

The crypt of St. Ansgar’s Chapel is now the organ curator’s workroom. Hardly anyone ever gets to see the cornerstone. And nobody has ever seen the very special stone hidden inside the cornerstone – the subject of the next installment in this series on the cathedral’s historic stones. 

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Special thanks to diocesan archivist Wayne Kempton for his kind assistance and to organ curator Douglass Hunt for the photo of the cornerstone.

Sources
Dolkart, Andrew S. Morningside Heights: A History of its Architecture & Development (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). ● “The Cathedral Corner-Stone,” Harper’s Weekly (January 7, 1893). ● “Cathedral of St. John the Divine: Laying of the Corner-Stone,” The Living Church (January 7, 1893). ● “From the First Church,” New York Times (December 23, 1892). ● “The Cathedral of St. John: Its Cornerstone to be Laid Tuesday,” (December 25, 1892). ● “The Story of the Ceremony,” New York Times (December 28, 1892). ● “Laid With Costly Stones,” New York Times (December 28, 1892). ● “Great Work Well Begun,” New York Times (December 28, 1892). ● “The Cornerstone Laid: Ceremonies at the Cathedral Site,” New York Tribune (December 28, 1892). “Its Foundations Rising,” New York Times (August 13, 1895).

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