Sacred Space

A Cathedral for the Great Immigration

DEAN KOWALSKI The argument was whether to have a cathedral or not. Do we need one? Do we want one? But as other American cathedrals got built, they began to understand what this Cathedral could mean for New York City and even for America.

WAYNE KEMPTON At the end of the 19th century if you wanted to rub elbows with the rich and famous, you were an Episcopalian. Up and down the East Coast, high society was one Episcopalian after another. In 1887, the first Bishop Potter was succeeded by his nephew, Henry Codman Potter. The second Bishop Potter was married to the widow of Alfred Corning Clark of the Singer Sewing Machine fortune. Potter was extremely wealthy and so was she. I’ve heard him described as “Pastor to the 400.” So by 1892, there was finally both the enthusiasm and the money to build an Episcopal cathedral.

BOB PENNOYER My great-grandfather, Pierpont Morgan, was a serious churchman. He started the Cathedral and Pierpont is said to have underwritten the rewriting of the Episcopal prayer book. Pierpont had a lot of imagination. Every year he attended the Episcopal Convention for appointing bishops. He went to those conventions in private railroad cars along with his mistress.

WILLIAM BRYANT LOGAN Bishop Henry Codman Potter was an intimate of the Cathedral Trustees Morgan, Huntington, Vanderbilt, Astor, and the like—all of whom he turned to for funds to begin construction. He established the church as a social force in New York. He was perhaps the Gilded Age’s best example of “the man of conscience.” Issues were the heart of Potter’s ministry.

FRANCIS SYPHER Combining ecclesiastical activity with lay activity was an American idea. The whole cathedral idea was developed very much with the support of lay people. Lay people as donors, as the members of the board, and lay people consulting all around. This was by contrast to the British idea of the cathedral as a monastic community of clerics. ANDREW DOLKART This was to be a cathedral, and it was going to be at the top of the heap. Bishop Potter was very clear that the Cathedral would counteract the notion that New York was not only a commercial city. Potter was involved in social reform; he was involved in housing. He saw St. John’s as a place where people of other denominations could interact with the Episcopalians.

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

EMMA LAZARUS, INDUCTED INTO THE AMERICAN POETS CORNER, 2006

HANNAH WOLFE EISNER The idea that the Cathedral was conceived as a truly American cathedral even predates the charter. In the early 19th century, when more than half of New York’s population was foreign born, St. John the Divine was conceived as an American Cathedral, affirming common ground between political ideals and the Gospel message.

DEAN KOWALSKI If the Cathedral was built only for denominational purposes, they built it too big. They had something else in mind. They believed they were building for everyone. New York was becoming the world’s most interfaith international city. Here would be a cathedral in which that great immigration would be represented. The Cornerstone was laid in 1892, the same year that Ellis Island opened. In the next decades, 71 percent of all immigrants arriving in America came through Ellis Island. Under its roof you were going to house the great conversations of all of the diverse new people of this city.

Top Forty percent of today’s American population had an ancestor enter through Ellis Island in New York City. From 1892 until it closed on November 12, 1954, 12 million immigrants entered here. Today, one in five New Yorkers is an immigrant, and one in six is a native-born U.S. citizen with at least one immigrant parent.

Bottom J. Pierpont Morgan, right, with colleagues.