The 1930s: From the Crash to the War
ANDREW DOLKART The Cathedral wasn’t finished when the Wall Street Crash happened in 1929. The whole economy was collapsing while the Cathedral continued major building work. But no one viewed the construction in a negative way. The Cathedral provided employment in New York and that was important. The Episcopalians were doing what they were supposed to do, which was to finish the church for whatever role it was going to play in New York society. And by this time, I don’t mean a role in high society, but whatever role it could play in New York culture. WAYNE KEMPTON Bishop Manning wanted to finish the Nave and he was providing jobs during the Depression. He used employment for continued fundraising so that the Cathedral could continue to build. MARNIE WEIR Living conditions became a huge conversation in the 1930s. Thousands of families had been living in a Hooverville just blocks away on the Great Lawn of Central Park.
STEPHEN FACEY When construction was finished in November 1941, there was a week of celebration. The huge front bronze doors would be opened, a curtain pulled back, and for the first time, visitors could view the full two-football-field-plus-a-foot length of the completed nave.
On Sunday, November 30, 1941, the congregation worshipped in the entire space for the first time. The next Sunday, December 7, was the attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt’s “Great Day of Infamy” ended the Cathedral’s great week of celebration. Within months, building of the Cathedral ceased. Most of the workers went off to war; they just laid down their tools. Building did not resume until 38 years later, in 1979. WAYNE KEMPTON The Midshipman's School of Coumbia University held its graduation exercises at the Cathedral. During the school's more than five years of operation, it graduated nearly 25,000 men. As of December 1945, 350 of those same men had been killed or reported missing in action.
BISHOP DIETSCHE Bishop Manning led a city-wide movement to eliminate the slums and tenements of New York. He dismantled an actual tenement apartment and re-erected it at the entrance door of the Cathedral. To enter the Cathedral, you had to pass through that slum and experience how the poor of New York were living. And then there is the famous story about All Souls, which is the nearest church to this Cathedral. One Easter morning the white people got to church early and locked the doors so that the Black people couldn’t come in. Manning went down there with an axe and knocked the chains off the door.
“Nothing is too great, too high, or too beautiful to be true.” BISHOP MANNING
Top left Granite carvers working on the façade, early 1930s. Top right Scaffolding enclosing the construction of the Nave, 1930s. Bottom The Midshipman's School of Columbia University's graduation exercises. 16
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