GOTHIC CATHEDRALS
I was surprised to find, just recently that the largest gothic style cathedral in the world is not in Europe. It is in America at Amsterdam Avenue at 112 the Street, in New York City. In is said to be large enough to hold all of Paris' Notre Dame and have room for Chartres cathedral as well.
Pace it off and you will find it measures 601 feet across the front by 360 feet at the transepts. The big rose window is forty feet in diameter and it is estimated to be made up of about ten thousand pieces of stained glass.
The idea of constructing such a building was much earlier, of course, but construction did not start until 1892. That was the year my mother was born in born at Aspenwall, Pennsylvania and, no doubt, she as a child ,read of , or was told about, the grand new building that was being built in New York City...a new church - real cathedral like those in Europe. I have heard and read about it being built all of my life, and it now appears that my grandchildren may be the ones to see it completed - maybe. Somewhere around mid-century a builder stuck his neck out and predicted that it would be completed by 2001.
They didn't make it. That date having gone by, I felt a need to check on it.
New Yorkers have an expression for such times. I don' t know that people in the Upper West Side, the Morningside Heights section near Columbia University use the expression, but a typical, terse retort to any critical allusion to the long delay might be the cryptic expression: “Not to worry!”
It means I am not to worry my empty skull worrying about such delays and postponements. That's the way cathedrals are built. They have always been built that way - with built-in procrastinations. Anyone who thinks he knows anything at all about he subject religious structures will know and appreciate that it takes longer than planned.
In its earliest days, the building of the edifice was deemed to be a joint effoct between the church and the community. Local, unskilled youths were hired and trained by James Baimbridge, a master stonemason from England, to cut the Indiana limestone to the proper sizes and shapes required and in the huge quantities needed.
Actual stone cutting from large chunks of Indiana limestone and estimates said they would use about 24,000 to build the two unfinished towers , and lest we think of it all being done by hand in a medieval manner, be it noted, they used used modern electric saws to cut the stone to exact proportions and even then it was project deserving the best of workmanship.
Grand cathedrals just can't be hurried.
Money, to, has been a delaying factor. At one point the cathedral filed bankruptcy papers. It has suffered several periods of inactivity. World War II saw it closed down from 1939 into the mid '40's. It has been progressing steadily ever since, and the church housed within the cathedral, such as it is today, is a vital part of community.
Let's not fret about when our new world-class cathedral will finished ...completed ...ready to show off. The European models were centuries a-buildin'..
I append a footnote for those of you who may become embroiled in an argument concerning size. Yes. St. Peter's , in Rome, is larger, but it is , “technically”, not a cathedral.
A. L.. M. June 30, 2003 [c622wds]
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