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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
Amy also carved a Vampire bat with a broad leaf-shaped nose, long pointed ears and a wide mouth ready for sucking blood.
Two side-by-side carvings near the north buttress column have a surreal quality to them.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
- – 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.