1892, Top of the Heap Late nineteenth century America was a time of vision and optimism. The Civil War was past; railroads were linking the country and immigrants from many nations were pouring in. In New York City, that optimism translated into building. Civic pride was strong; so too was the idea of America as more democratic and egalitarian than the Old World, and certainly more energetic. Those with influence wanted to make their mark on the city as the city made its mark on the world. Come Everybody and Be Welcome
“Is there in the system of the Church in this country any legitimate place for a cathedral? Can it have any such uses as will justify us in making so large an outlay as would be required to achieve anything worthy of the Diocese and of this great metropolis of the American continent? My dear Brethren, in my deliberate judgment of these questions, they can be strongly answered in the affirmative...” BISHOP HORATIO POTTER
In 1828, the Episcopal Bishop of New York, John Henry Hobart met with the city’s mayor. Bishop Hobart proposed building a cathedral in the center of the city near Washington Square. But the American revolt and wars against the British were still fresh in the minds of New Yorkers. Mayor Paulding objected, “The people of New York will riot in the streets.” Gradually, over many years, people came to embrace the idea of a cathedral for New York. THE REV. TOM PIKE
ANDREW DOLKART In the 19th century, traveling Americans went to London, Paris, Rome, and Berlin. They visited museums, botanical gardens, zoos, and the opera, and they were determined to recreate those institutions in America—most particularly here in New York. WAYNE KEMPTON New York was a booming metropolis, not to mention that in 1858 the Roman Catholics laid the cornerstone for St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue. In 1872, Bishop Horatio Potter again called for an Episcopal cathedral. The time had come.
STEPHEN FACEY The original New York State Charter of 1873 charged the proposed Cathedral to be a “house of prayer for the use of all people; an instrument of church unity; and a center of intellectual light and leadership.” DEAN JAMES PARKS MORTON The Cathedral commitment of being open to all people goes back to that Charter. A cathedral was meant to be an intellectual center of learning and compassion, and simultaneously the patron of the business and craft guilds—a mix of the sacred and the secular to meet the spiritual, economic, and human needs of the new cities. The great medieval cathedrals were designed to accommodate the entire population of their town or city. New York was the melting pot. People from all over the world were coming here, and they weren’t just Episcopalians. FRANCIS SYPHER Emphasis of the mission aspect, outreach, and involvement are all part of the founding story of the Cathedral. The commitment to social activism was there from the very beginning. Before St. John the Divine was built, the church had a “pro-cathedral,” a kind of a mission cathedral on the Lower East Side. Bishop Potter lived near there on Stanton Street and ministered to the people doing work among the poor and the immigrants. WAYNE KEMPTON After 1873, the group that Bishop Horatio Potter drew together began to have doubts about whether the Diocese was up to such a huge encounter of planning and money. That stalled things for twenty years.
April 16, 1873, a charter for the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine was granted by the New York state legislature grants. THE REV. TOM PIKE The founders of the Sixty-eight architectural firms entered the 1888 design competition to build the Cathedral. It was the most prominent project of its kind in the United States. In 1891, Heins & LaFarge won with a design, pictured right, based on Romanesque forms with many Byzantine and Gothic elements. 6
Cathedral were living in a New York where the old ways of the world were exploding. This was a city full of contrast. Some New Yorkers were getting fabulously rich and some were starving. That old Bishop and these lay leaders understood that image of the apocalypse. It wasn’t by accident that they went to the Book of Revelation to come up with a name: “The Cathedral of St. John the Divine.” 7
