(There are many urban legends involving the Cathedral. The article above is an example. Curious about the arch and hoping to locate it, I turned to the Cathedral’s Senior Guide and Historian – Tom Fedorek. Here is the story, or should we say, the corrected story, about the unfinished arch – Roger)
Here is the arch in question as it appears today. It is one of the four broad arches that line each side of the Great Choir and bear the load of the chambers housing the organ pipes above (they are not “decorative”). This arch, the last one on the north side, is the only one with floral carving on its voussoirs, beginning on the right side but petering out as reaches the peak. Its left side is unadorned, as are all of the other Great Choir arches. The capitals are likewise unfinished.
What Might Have Happened
It is December 7, 1941. We imagine the stonecarver standing on a scaffold in the Great Choir. We see the concentration on his face as he carefully shapes the stone. A radio is playing softly in the background. Suddenly an announcer breaks in with the news of the attack. It is a moment he’ll never forget. Shaken, he quickly packs up and heads home to his family. The next day he’s not there. Perhaps he’s joined the thousands of men lining up to enlist. The carving on the arch is never finished. It remains to this day as a testament to a heart-stopping moment in American history.
The “Pearl Harbor Arch” is a compelling story. I have heard it recounted by innumerable sightseeing guides and a few of our own cathedral guides. When I took a television crew through the place some years ago, the first thing they wanted to shoot was the Pearl Harbor Arch.
None of it is true.
Some Important Facts
Let’s think about this. December 7, 1941 was a Sunday. Does it seem likely that the cathedral would have had a stonecarver working on a Sunday, hammering on stone and scattering dust and debris around the main worship space? Especially on this particular Sunday – the grand finale of the eight-day celebration of the consecration of the building’s full length that began on November 30?
More to the point — archival photographs dating back many years prior to 1941 show the arch looking exactly as it does today. This one is from 1929, but I have seen the unfinished carving in photos from 1913 in the cathedral archives. The only way the arch could be the “Pearl Harbor Arch” would be if the Second World War had preceded the First.
Many mysteries remain. Whose idea was it to gussy up Heins & La Farge’s powerful, Richardsonian arches? Who executed the work? And why was it never finished?
When facts are lacking, fiction may fill the vaccuum. The Pearl Harbor Arch is just one of the urban legends that have attached themselves to the cathedral like barnacles to the bottom of a ship.
■
- Many thanks to Tom Fedorek, Cathedral Historian and Senior Guide for this blog
4 replies on “The Unfinished Arch”
Thanks for righting a myth or at least putting it in a proper historical context.
Here’s another mystery: wouldn’t decorative carving be done on the ground in a workshop?
And another myth: construction of the Great Choir was progressing rapidly. To maintain the schedule the foreman had the arch constructed in its unfinished state, thinking “no one will ever notice it.”
I think it probably was, at least as can be seen from a photograph that used to be displayed in the north transept on the way to the then gift shop, c. 1988-89. It shows Edwardo Ardolino, or perhaps his brother, carving a corinthian capitol, while he is standing on the ground. I used to work as a carver at the cathedral, from 1990-92. I just recreantly discovered the man in the picture was a cousin, by marriage, from the town of Torre le Noccelle, http://tlngenealogy.blogspot.com/search?q=Ardolino
Very interesting story. Sherlock Holmes overtones. Typical Cathedral mystery with more to to come I am sure. Thanks Tom for all you do keeping the story alive.