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A Cathedral for the 21st Century A

A Cathedral for the 21st Century An Oral Biography of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine New York City

Compiled by Bill Smith and Wayne Pearson

Edited by Rebecca Merrill

Assistant Editors Hannah Eisner Lisa Schubert Isadora Wilkenfeld

A Cathedral for the 21st Century An Oral Biography of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine New York City

Compiled by Bill Smith and Wayne Pearson

Edited by Rebecca Merrill

Assistant Editors Hannah Eisner Lisa Schubert Isadora Wilkenfeld

heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; they will be His peoples, and God Himself will be with them.” I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. From the Revelation to Saint John the Divine

A sculpture of Saint John located between the Great Bronze Doors of the Western Façade of the Cathedral. i D

A Cathedral for the 21st Century: An Oral Biography of the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine 1047 Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10025 stjohndivine.org info@stjohndivine.org Design by Michael Bierut, Delta Murphy, and Chantal Jahchan Pentagram Design, New York, NY Design production managment by Tess McCann Pentagram Design, New York, NY

Contents

1 A Cathedral for New York

Sacred Space

1892, Top of the Heap

Between the Wars

Changing City

The '70s, the '80s, and Then Some

9/11 and the Fire, 2001

Timeline 40

Production coordination by Officina Libraria Milan, Italy

2 Visit

Printed by Intergrafica Verona, Italy

3 People and Events

4 The Cathedral Year

137

5 Mission

165

First a Church

167

Music

173

The Arts

179

A Convening Authority

187

Unfinished: A Cathedral for the 21st Century

193

6 Cathedral Community

199

Congregation of St. Saviour

201

Cathedral Community Cares (CCC)

203

Advancing the Community of Tomorrow (ACT)

207

Nightwatch Crossroads

208

The Textile Conservation Laboratory

211

The Cathedral School

212

Appendix

215

Credits

236

Index

238

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. Copyright © Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine 2019 Distribution by Officina Libraria, Milan, Italy, through ACC Art Book, New York ISBN 987-88-3367-085-0 Printed in Italy

Contents

1 A Cathedral for New York

Sacred Space

1892, Top of the Heap

Between the Wars

Changing City

The '70s, the '80s, and Then Some

9/11 and the Fire, 2001

Timeline 40

Production coordination by Officina Libraria Milan, Italy

2 Visit

Printed by Intergrafica Verona, Italy

3 People and Events

4 The Cathedral Year

137

5 Mission

165

First a Church

167

Music

173

The Arts

179

A Convening Authority

187

Unfinished: A Cathedral for the 21st Century

193

6 Cathedral Community

199

Congregation of St. Saviour

201

Cathedral Community Cares (CCC)

203

Advancing the Community of Tomorrow (ACT)

207

Nightwatch Crossroads

208

The Textile Conservation Laboratory

211

The Cathedral School

212

Appendix

215

Credits

236

Index

238

Dedication The Most Reverend Michael Bruce Curry Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church

Saint John saw his vision of the world’s end in the Book of Revelation. Exiled and imprisoned for his witness to the way of Jesus, John was caught up “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10). He lifted up his head, and he saw the dream. No more war. No more suffering. No more injustice. No more bigotry. No more violence. No more hatred. Every man and woman under their own vine or fig tree. The rule of love. The way of God. The kingdom. The reign. The great Shalom, Salaam of God. The dream. God is on a mission to work through “our struggle and confusion,” as the Prayer Book says, to realize God’s dream. My brothers and sisters, God has not given up on the work, and God is not finished with The Episcopal Church yet. It is as the Jesus Movement, following Jesus’ way, that we join hands with brothers and sisters of different Christian communities, with brothers and sisters of other faith and religious traditions and with brothers and sisters. Some may be atheist or agnostic or just on a journey, but they long for a better world where children do not starve and where there is, as the old spiritual says, “plenty of room for all of God’s children.”

Bishop Curry preaching at the Evensong celebrating the 125th anniversary of the laying of the Cathedral's cornerstone, November 2018. v H

Dedication The Most Reverend Michael Bruce Curry Presiding Bishop, The Episcopal Church

Bishop Curry preaching at the Evensong celebrating the 125th anniversary of the laying of the Cathedral's cornerstone, November 2018. v H

A Cathedral for New York “It is a fortunate circumstance that the great Cathedral of St. John the Divine has reached completion at this time of world crisis. This happy consummation is a witness to all the world that American faith in the eternal verities of religion remains unshaken.” FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, 1941

Sacred Space

1892, Top of the Heap

Between the Wars

Changing City

The '70s, the '80s, and Then Some

9/11 and the Fire, 2001

Sacred Space

1892, Top of the Heap

Between the Wars

Changing City

The '70s, the '80s, and Then Some

9/11 and the Fire, 2001

Sacred Space Sacred and religious buildings are among our oldest monuments. From prehistoric sites to ancient temples, architecture has evoked feelings of reverence and mystery. The Cathedral inspires awe to both strangers and those who turn to it in their daily lives.

Spirit and Hope

MARNIE WEIR The first thing people do is look up. Even if they’ve been here a hundred times, they look up.

JESSYE NORMAN I

PHILIPPE PETIT When you look up, your soul follows your eyes. You’re soaring.

WAYNE KEMPTON It is a fact. Almost everyone that walks down the Nave begins to whisper. There’s no sign that says “silence” or anything like that. It is the building. It commands reverence.

MARILYN NELSON There is something that makes you lift your eyes. And lifting your eyes does something to your being. It is literally uplifting. Somebody wrote that we are searching for something that is equal to our capacity for awe. The Cathedral gives us that. It hints of a vastness that you can’t quite take in. ABDEL R. SALAAM Coming in, one has a very clear picture of what it must have been like to walk into the Egyptian temples, or the temples of ancient Greece, or the Vatican when it was first built. You know, that BANG! And at the same time, it’s so “now.” And yet you get this ancient feeling. It’s almost like an ancient future. TOM HURWITZ Watching

people come here is amazing. The looks on their faces when they see the building, its size, its design, its mystery. They are awestruck, elevated somehow because the entire Cathedral is built with a theology, an incarnational theology. TOM FEDOREK The

iconography of the Gothic cathedrals is a kind of code. Nothing is random. The symbolism and images are part of a tradition that go back to the beginning of Christianity, and in many cases to the pre-Christian era. WAYNE KEMPTON The Cathedral was designed under the principles of the sacred geometry. That has a special impact for people. If you look at the giant Crystal of Quartz or the Nautilus in the bays, you see eternity. Cathedrals have a way of doing that.

Previous The Consecration of the Nave, November 30, 1941. Left The Nave looking east toward the High Altar. 2

PHILIPPE PETIT Books are written on the mystery of the Cathedral. So many things are not evident, but still you are touched by them, the golden ratio of the arches, the way the sun plays through the glass to create color in the nave. This place elevates your spirit.

go to the Cathedral as often as I can. It has something different. Everybody speaks in a whisper.

PAUL WINTER When we were composing the Earth Mass, we stayed through the night. At 3 am, Keith Critchlow, a professor of sacred geometry, brought out drawings and described the sacred geometry of the Cathedral. From that night, from my own experience, and from the exaltation we shared, I understood that the purpose of the great cathedrals is to awaken a sense of the sacred. Sacred—meaning a connectedness with the universe.

“The Gothic cathedral is a blossoming in stone subdued by the insatiable demand of harmony in nature.” RALPH WALDO EMERSON, INDUCTED INTO THE AMERICAN POETS CORNER, 1987 KEITH CRITCHLOW Laws, symbols, metaphors of sacred space are all at work in the experience of the Cathedral. They needn’t be understood fully to be experienced… Silence is called for, and the intelligence of the heart. THE REV. TOM PIKE For

many years I thought buildings were a liability. I said, “The best thing that could happen would be a big fire to burn them all to the ground.” But I was wrong. I began to see that churches were launch pads for mission and programs. Many good things begin in church buildings. I began to think about architecture and storytelling and how buildings spoke in the community. I thought about buildings as something deeper that had to do with a spiritual view of society. I began to recognize that architecture and art were major resources for human dignity and civil rights. Church buildings hold a key to our hearts. When people see a spire on the horizon or a stone tower at the end of the street, they get in touch with peace, forgiveness, and mercy—feelings central to who they are. Buildings serve a function having to do with spirit and hope. 3

Spirit and Hope

MARNIE WEIR The first thing people do is look up. Even if they’ve been here a hundred times, they look up.

JESSYE NORMAN I

PHILIPPE PETIT When you look up, your soul follows your eyes. You’re soaring.

WAYNE KEMPTON It is a fact. Almost everyone that walks down the Nave begins to whisper. There’s no sign that says “silence” or anything like that. It is the building. It commands reverence.

Previous The Consecration of the Nave, November 30, 1941. Left The Nave looking east toward the High Altar. 2

go to the Cathedral as often as I can. It has something different. Everybody speaks in a whisper.

A Place to Be Surprised by God

BISHOP ANDREW M.L. DIETSCHE The power of the Cathedral is not simply the beauty or the complexity of its architecture, it is the sacredness of the space. As clergy we walk around that altar sensing its power, and then we sanctify the space around the altar to connect us to our loving God. PHILIPPE PETIT You can feel this power. It invades you; it makes you strong; it makes you solid in whatever belief you have. I see people getting lost in the Cathedral. They realize that everything is a song to a higher power. They are discovering the unseen. When you are an artist, there are moments where nothing works. You lose faith. The Cathedral always rekindled the fire in me. It is a creative laboratory of the most inspiring kind because of the mysterious and sacred space.

“I think this is where God lives.” MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS NEIGHBOR, AGE 5 TOM FEDOREK In my late teens and early

twenties, I struggled. I often found myself visiting the Cathedral, just sitting there experiencing that vast space. It was a physical metaphor for what was going on inside of me. We measure physical growth in inches, but psychological growth involves much larger distances. That is what I found sitting in the Cathedral watching the light change.

SUSAN RODRIGUEZ If you are alone there, the magnitude can feel incredibly intimate. When there is a big celebration, it is jubilant and resonant. The Cathedral lies in the balance between the beauty found in a ruin and being so incredibly alive. THE REV. TOM PIKE What

you see is a place that has reached for the light in many directions. The Cathedral perpetuates hope in New York City. It has a dimension that goes beyond art because its roots are so deep and nurtured by so many things. You don’t have to be an Episcopalian or a Christian to appreciate the Cathedral. You can just be somebody who’s sensitive to reality around you.

Top The Rev. Canon Edward Nason West celebrating the Holy Eucharist, 1970s. Bottom left George Nakashima’s Altar for Peace was crafted from the trunk of a single 300-year-old black walnut tree. Nakashima, a woodworker, furniture maker, and design innovator, got the idea for his sacred table in a dream. The table was installed and blessed on New Year’s Eve, 1986, with representatives of the world’s religions and other exalted guests in attendance. Bottom right Interior stair case, which features the famed Guastavino tile system, leading to the Crypt. 4

DEAN JAMES AUGUST KOWALSKI You come to expect the unexpected here. It may be Sunday morning at the High Altar facing the Rose Window. You raise the Host. Then a hymn starts and some phrase that you’ve sung since you were a kid dances with new meaning. New because you are surrounded by the Cathedral. You are in a natural place to be surprised by God. DEAN CLIFTON DANIEL III Anything we can do to point to the sacredness of creation, the sacredness of human life, or the sacredness of the Church, is what we’re about. We can find the wonder of creation everywhere, but here at the Cathedral, everything we see is beautiful. Every time I walk in I think, “Oh my God, look at this!” The Cathedral always references the Divine and reminds us that this beauty comes from somewhere.

“I do not believe in God except when I’m inside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.” VISITOR THE REV. TOM PIKE The

Episcopal Church says a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace. The Cathedral is an outward and visible sign of our community moving through time. It recalls the struggles of our past and it points to our future. People have an inkling that the roots of the building are deep in the mystery of existence. They know this is a place that has encouraged sharing and experiencing joy and peace. Adlai Stevenson eulogized Eleanor Roosevelt here at this Cathedral. He said she would rather light a candle than curse the darkness. That is what the Cathedral has been, a candle in the midst of much darkness. The Cathedral transcends ethnic, racial, and economic things. That’s why it is so important spiritually to our community. Saint Paul has a wonderful line in the Eighth Chapter of Romans, “The Spirit gives utterance to the sighs of the heart that are too deep for words.” The Cathedral gives concrete expression to the sighs of the heart that are too deep for words. Just walking past the place you feel that you own it because it speaks to your heart. “It’s my Cathedral.” TOM HURWITZ This

building is the end of uncountable pilgrimages, personal and spiritual. It is used architecture, architecture that has been prayed in, walked over, and celebrated in. A path gains meaning as more feet walk over it. EDIE FALCO I think that over the years all the people who have gone there to worship have left a kind of deep vibe, for lack of a better word. The building holds that as a chorus in some way. It’s something I feel very powerfully. You can find that place in yourself because the spirit is already there. WAYNE KEMPTON You know how time works in space? All the old television shows are still playing out there somewhere. All the events still echo. That’s true with the Cathedral only all the events are contained inside this one room. I don’t think you need a reminder that this is sacred space. TOM FEDOREK Somebody once asked me, “Why have you stayed at the Cathedral so long? What keeps you going?” I thought about it and said, “The place has never stopped being mysterious to me and I hope it never will.”

A Place to Be Surprised by God

“I think this is where God lives.” MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS NEIGHBOR, AGE 5 TOM FEDOREK In my late teens and early

“I do not believe in God except when I’m inside the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.” VISITOR THE REV. TOM PIKE The

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

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.

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.

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.

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. 8

A Cathedral for the Great Immigration

The Presence and Mystery to Inspire

ANDREW DOLKART The period between the late 1880s and the beginning of World War I is when The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Brooklyn Museum all expanded. The Public Library was founded. Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Botanical Garden, and the Bronx Zoo were built. Columbia, NYU, City College, and Barnard all built their campuses. There was a huge expansion of the institutional realm. JESSYE NORMAN These

places all had the same idea about how they could be a place for all people to come, to learn, and to take part. They were concerned about being a part of the community in which they were built. All of these great public places putting forth their attitudes of “Come everybody. And be welcome.” ANDREW DOLKART The

New York Public Library was given land on Fifth Avenue. The Met was permitted to expand into Central Park, but other institutions had to look for places to build. Morningside Heights was the most convenient spot. So Morningside Heights becomes this academic, intellectual, institutional center of the city. It was called "The Acropolis of New York." WAYNE KEMPTON Morningside Heights is one of the highest points in Manhattan. The plan was when you pulled into New York Harbor, you would see the Cathedral of St. John the Divine overlooking the entire city. Top left The eight granite columns were cut from the Wharff Quarry in Vinylhaven, Maine. They are 55 feet in height, 6 feet in diameter and weigh 130 tons each. The foundation of the columns goes down 135 feet to bedrock. Moving the columns was a feat of engineering. They were loaded on a specially designed barge and shipped to the city two at a time. A truck with wooden wheels pulled ahead by a powerful winch carried the columns to 112th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, a journey of about two miles. It took 19 days. Top right Building surveyors photographed in the Town Building, December 10, 1895. Middle left Raising the columns, 1904. Middle right Stone carvers in the workshed of the north field. In the background, sculptures of the saints, which are now placed on the exterior roof line of the apse. The models were designed by Gutzon Borglum.

ANDREW DOLKART Actually, you would have to have a very strong pair of binoculars to see the Cathedral from New York Harbor. It was supposed to be visible to lower Manhattan because initially, the front of the Cathedral was planned to face south toward 110th Street. You would have had these very tall towers facing the southern end. It was a poetic notion. But in the Episcopal tradition, the Choir is at the east end. So the planners moved the Cathedral entrance to face west toward Amsterdam Avenue.

SUSAN RODRIGUEZ The Cathedral was very complex to construct. The whole thing was a technical feat. There was a tremendous operation just to quarry the stone. The excavation took much longer than they had planned. WAYNE KEMPTON When they started to dig the foundation, they couldn’t reach bedrock. They were running out of money. Pierpont Morgan donated half a million dollars, saying: “Here’s a little something to get you out of the hole.” I don’t know whether that’s an accurate quote, but it may be. In 1911, the Cathedral opened the Chancel, the Choir, and the Crossing: half a cathedral with a pulpit. By 1914, all the outer buildings had been completed. The Bishop’s House had 32 rooms. When Morgan was asked why he built such a big house, he said, “Why shouldn’t the Bishop live like the rest of us?” THE REV. TOM PIKE There

is no way to escape the fact that many of those we call robber barons helped build the Cathedral. But it’s just one piece of the story. Pierpont Morgan understood that to have a great city, you had to have a great space. Not just to convene people, but to inspire them. What was the Cathedral trying to inspire? It wasn’t just about having the biggest organ in North America, or having a hundred million yards of stained glass, or fitting 10,000 people. The tougher issue was, “What is it that would make the Cathedral inspiring?” Like all of us, Morgan and the others were looking to create something that had the presence and mystery to inspire. The Cathedral is a place where the human situation is magnified. History, the present, and the future are all magnified here. Shortly before he died, Morgan was preparing to go on his final trip. He was not well, as he got into his car, ready to leave New York for the last time, he told the chauffeur, “Take me up to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.” It’s hard to know what was in Morgan’s head, but the Cathedral was the last thing he saw in New York.

FRANCIS SYPHER The idea was that it would be up here on the hill where everybody could see it and the doors would be opened to all. That design was part of the conception. That conception is also reflected on the seven Chapels of the Tongues with each one devoted to a different immigrant group with services in their own languages. STEPHEN FACEY The seven chapels represented seven of the immigrant communities in New York at that time. Today, you would have to build dozens of chapels to represent the ethnic neighborhoods of the city.

Bottom The Consecration of the Choir, the Crossing, and the Chapels of St. Saviour and St. Columba, April 19, 1911. 10

The Presence and Mystery to Inspire

Bottom The Consecration of the Choir, the Crossing, and the Chapels of St. Saviour and St. Columba, April 19, 1911. 10

Between the Wars The period between the wars brought sweeping change to the nation and to the Cathedral. As America recovered from the First World War, the economy boomed, and major philanthropists flocked to complete New York City’s great sacred space. The Roaring Twenties were followed by the Great Depression. Times—and priorities about where to invest private and public money—once again changed.

For the Whole World

“Whatever inspires and strengthens the religious belief and religious activity of the people, whatever ministers to their spiritual life, is of supreme importance. Without it all other efforts will fail. With it there lies the only hope of success.” CALVIN COOLIDGE MARNIE WEIR At the end of World War I, a new energy kicked in. A new confidence in the American people, a post-war, “We’re going to do this ourselves.” The Cathedral was moving in a new direction. DEAN KOWALSKI It was the 1920s, the War was over and the new Bishop, William T. Manning, was eager to resume building the Cathedral. Bishop Manning made the claim that $15 million would “Complete the Cathedral.” Franklin Delano Roosevelt led the Building Campaign— it was national news and widely followed across the country. BISHOP WILLIAM THOMAS MANNING The Cathedral stands for the beauty and greatness of human life, not as it is but as Christ will make it, and so it stands for unending progress, for everything that will make this a better city, human life nobler and happier, and this world a better place.

STEPHEN FACEY The Campaign kicked off at Madison Square Garden. It was a “Ten-week $15-million campaign to finish the Cathedral.” Ralph Adams Cram, who had succeeded the original architects, Heins & LaFarge, built a 12-foot, one-ton model of the Cathedral that was placed in the middle of Grand Central Station. Children passing through Grand Central would throw their pennies in for the building. THE REV. TOM PIKE They

used to have collections for the Cathedral on Sundays. People all over the country would put out their dollars and their dimes. It was a love offering from a great cross section of the population. WILLIAM BRYANT LOGAN

In the 1920s, the building of the nave became a project for the whole world, receiving gifts from the Emperor of Japan, the King of Siam, Adolph Ochs of the New York Times, Prime Minister Benes of Czechoslovakia, and thousands of ordinary citizens who thronged benefit track meets, poetry readings, boxing tournaments, horse shows, and other schemes—all to help finish the Cathedral.

DEAN KOWALSKI The plans to finish the Cathedral captured America’s imagination. People, and not just Episcopalians, were thrilled with this vision to build something so big in this great city. “We’re going to build something amazing and what we are building is the Cathedral of St. John Divine.”

“The Cathedral when completed will be the greatest in the English-speaking world and will stand among the greatest ecclesiastical buildings ever erected… It will be one of the glories of Christendom; a sacrament in stone.” CATHEDRAL ARCHIVES

New Yorkers celebrating the end of the War, 1918. 12

For the Whole World

New Yorkers celebrating the end of the War, 1918. 12

Roosevelt, Rockefeller, and the Bishop

ANDREW DOLKART They were trying to get funding. And, in some cases, it was very successful. One of the issues that arose was whether The Cathedral was going to be for Episcopalians or an ecumenical place for all Christians. The rhetoric of various bishops, beginning with Henry Codman Potter and continuing with Manning, was that St. John’s was a church for all people and that it welcomed everyone. But when non-Episcopalians asked to be involved in the governance of the Cathedral, they were turned away. This became very specific in 1925. John D. Rockefeller Jr. gave half a million dollars, and along with it, sent a letter to Manning saying that he thought he should be appointed to the Cathedral Board. WAYNE KEMPTON Bishop Manning announced the Rockefeller gift to the newspapers without mentioning Rockefeller’s “other suggestion” about joining the Board. The next morning, February 7, 1925, the headline in the New York Times was, “Rockefeller Gives Cathedral $500,000.” Up to that point all the trustees had been Episcopalian. Rockefeller was a devout Baptist. Rockefeller wrote Manning a second letter saying, “I see this article in the paper but there seems to be no mention of….” Manning wrote back, “Yes, thank you. We’ll take up the business of the trustees after the Cathedral is finished.”

WAYNE KEMPTON When Bishop Manning was asked whether salvation could be found outside The Episcopal Church, he replied, “Perhaps so, but no gentleman would care to avail himself of it.” DEAN MORTON There is a story that Bishop Manning even suggested to Rockefeller that he might begin studying for an Episcopalian confirmation. ANDREW DOLKART Rockefeller was really irritated. He’d given his money but his request had been ignored. The end result was that it inspired Rockefeller to build his own church. And not only was he was going to build a church, but his church was going to be the rival of the Cathedral. Initially he wanted to build nearby on Morningside Drive where it would have towered over the Cathedral. He was unable to obtain that site, so he opted for Riverside Drive. The Riverside Church was finished quickly, totally funded, and it was taller than the Cathedral.

“Build it as a protest against brutality, hatred, and wrong. Build it, not solely for the Diocese of New York, but build it for all the living in the world. Build it as a contribution of America to the spiritual life of all people.” ELIHU ROOT, NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE, US SECRETARY OF STATE

Top As the leader of the Cathedral Building Campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt utilized the new media of national radio to challenge all Americans to “Complete the Cathedral.” Roosevelt’s broadcast was delivered before a cheering crowd of 15,000 at Madison Square Garden, January 18, 1925. Bottom left John D. Rockefeller Jr. trailed by reporters in the Cathedral Close. Bottom right The 1925 Building Campaign. 14

Roosevelt, Rockefeller, and the Bishop

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

The 1930s: From the Crash to the War

“Nothing is too great, too high, or too beautiful to be true.” BISHOP MANNING

Changing City America emerged from World War II as a country of profound and deepening contradictions. Black soldiers who had gone to fight for their homeland returned to Jim Crow laws and even lynchings. The Episcopal Church traditionally represented a slice of New York society: well-to-do, and most of all, white.

The Episcopal Shift

THE REV. TOM PIKE

After the war, people thought The Episcopal Church was in decline in New York. There was less money, fewer people, and great social issues were falling all around. But the Church did not go into decline because of a new prayer book or the embrace of different ethnic groups. The Episcopal shift reflected a cultural shift. Again welcoming new people and again recreating our city.

DEAN MORTON Urban unrest in American cities in the 1950s and 1960s was a problem to all established institutions: commercial, educational, and religious. The large white religious communities in particular were concerned because many of their long-established churches and synagogues were located in the racially challenged central cities.

PAMELA MORTON Traditional parishioners were leaving the inner-city congregations. The churches was a study done in the didn’t know how to cope, or maybe they just didn’t 1950s that said the most segregated occupation know how to invite the new people in. in the country was Episcopal clergyman. Even Sunday Schools were segregated. There were articles in the Diocesan newspapers about how the THE REV. SANDYE WILSON My family were Diocesan Convention was so nice because the two members of St. James Episcopal Church in races could talk in the same room. Well, we needed Baltimore for generations. In 1953, they joined more than that. The new Bishop, Horace Donegan, a small group of people who founded Church preached social activism. But that was the era of of the Holy Trinity down the street. A white “Father Knows Best.” You could preach equality congregation had left Holy Trinity because of the and still not really get anywhere. People would “changing neighborhood,” read: becoming more agree, but they wouldn’t take action. Black. The white parishioners left all of the silver, the vestments, and everything else and told the diocese that they could make it a Black church but DEAN KOWALSKI I grew up in a church that doesn’t bear much resemblance to the church today. they weren’t staying to be a part of it. So the rector of St. James came down the street with the choir The 1950s and 1960s were not necessarily “the and some of the members to start Holy Trinity in good old times.” The religious institutions were its new incarnation. The first babies brought into moralistic, trying to control their congregants and Holy Trinity were my twin brother and me. the larger culture. Certainly, there was a shift. As the tent has gotten bigger, we’ve become more “The tide of statistics has been running against embracing. We have become more accepting. the Diocese of New York since the late 1930s. What we see today is a product of a church that While the communicant lists of the Diocese was figuring out sociopolitical issues in terms of of New York slipped year by year, those of faith. the dioceses in New Jersey, Long Island, and Connecticut grew.” CATHEDRAL ARCHIVES BISHOP DIETSCHE Always we have had great progressive leaders and great conservative leaders both moving us, shaping us, and ultimately moving BOB PENNOYER In 1800, New York had been us forward. A lot of our victories and a lot of 98 percent Protestant, but that had changed. By that tolerance was hard won. Hard won with the the 1960s, New York’s population was 50 percent church battling with itself, trying to move forward. Roman Catholic, 25 percent Jewish, and the other 25 percent they called Protestant, although by that time, the church going Protestant population of WILLIAM BRYANT LOGAN The 1947 funeral New York City was down to four percent. for Fiorello LaGuardia marked a new era for the Cathedral. As the great representative of progressive city government went to his grave, the nation fell into the hysteria of the Cold War. WAYNE KEMPTON There

Leaving the Cathedral following the funeral service of former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Front, carrying the Bishop’s staff, is the Rev. Gerald V. Barry, rector of Christ Church, Riverdale; followed by the Rt. Rev. Charles K. Gilbert, Bishop of New York; Governor Thomas L. Dewey; and New York City Mayor William O'Dwyer, September 22, 1947. 18

The Episcopal Shift

THE REV. TOM PIKE

A Church Informed by Social Justic

BISHOP PAUL MOORE JR. In almost direct proportion to the increasing importance of the city in American culture has been the withdrawal—both physical and spiritual—of the Protestant Church…. After World War II, various groups in The Episcopal Church spontaneously began to look for a positive approach to the inner-city situation. Formal Anglican religion faced Southern Negroes, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Asians, Kentucky farmers, Italians, Irish, and the other culturally different dwellers of the tenements. None of these people could feel sympathetic to the restrained orderliness of classical Anglicanism… Could the cumbersome, dignified, proper, and occasionally over respectable Episcopal Church reach the throbbing life of a city? FRANCIS SYPHER The West

Side suddenly went from being a premier neighborhood in the city, with all the glitter and glamour that was attached to it, to a neighborhood with social problems. And this changed the perspective of the institutions that found themselves here. They had to decide, “Are we going to stay and minister to the people in the neighborhood?” The Cathedral was one of the institutions that decided to face that need rather than to turn away from it. VIVIEN HEWITT The West Side went through changes for sure. It was not the upper-middleclass white enclave envisioned by its 19th-century builders. But the period after the War also stirred a new cultural vitality in the neighborhoods of Morningside Heights, Harlem, and Sugar Hill. Not only were the new families of the Great Migration pouring in, but within blocks of the Cathedral, the luminaries of Black America were living. Langston Hughes, Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robeson, Duke Ellington, Katherine Dunham, W. E. B. Du Bois, and even a young Ruby Dee all were within walking distance of St. John’s. Many became devoted members of the Cathedral community.

Top The Rt. Rev. Horace W. B. Donegan, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Very Rev. James Pike. “Pike possessed a unique ability to commend the faith of the Church to thinking men and women. He had charisma.” william bryant logan

Bottom The Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, then Suffragan Bishop of Washington, D.C., marching for the District of Columbia Home Rule with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Walter Fauntroy, 1968. “My father marched with Dr. King and the DC Coalition of Conscience, which my father and Rev. Walter E. Fauntroy cochaired.” honor moore 20

WILLIAM BRYANT LOGAN Through the 1950s and 1960s, Dean James Pike and Bishop Horace Donegan spoke continually against Senator Joseph McCarthy, against loyalty oaths, against racism and prejudice. For the first time, the Cathedral found itself on the defensive. Sentiments which had been music to the ears of a LaGuardia or a Roosevelt—were regarded by a Nixon or McCarthy as decidedly “Pink.” That Dean Pike could fill the Cathedral for his sermons against apartheid, against the House Un-American Activities Committee, and against unethical business was a tribute to his eloquence, but also a sign of the negative turn liberalism had been forced to make. DEAN JAMES PIKE The church has often been healthiest when it was illegal; we got our start that way.

“There is hardly anything more obvious than the fact that evil is present in the universe. It projects its nagging, prehensile tentacles into every level of human existence. We may debate over the origin of evil, but only the person victimized with a superficial optimism will debate over its reality. Evil is with us as a stark, grim, and colossal reality.” THE REVEREND DOCTOR MARTIN LUTHER KING JR., PREACHING AT THE CATHEDRAL IN 1956 TOM FEDOREK The

Cathedral was very much a part of the movement. When the 1960s frieze Taking a Stand was added over the Great Bronze Doors, it was defaced with swastikas.

TOM FEDOREK

Social concerns had always been connected with the church, but in the 1960s there was an expanding educational movement. Urban churches began to come together and have exchanges about issues. There was definitely an urban church movement. The national Church asked Jim to train people to work in the inner cities to stop the flight to the suburbs and to identify the new sources of power.

DEAN MORTON

DEAN MORTON In 1962, the new National Office of The Episcopal Church recruited me to start an Inner-City and Metropolitan Office. The leadership of the Church was largely ignorant about the changed dynamics of the cities. My job was to make the hard-up inner-city Episcopal Churches of America’s changed neighborhoods “cued-in.”

Bishop Donegan was not overtly a radical, though he was definitely a social liberal. But probably what turned things around at the Cathedral was the new Dean, James Pike. There were very few radical causes that Pike didn’t sign on to. He was a rebel within the church. He even got on the cover of TIME Magazine. Donegan and Pike worked together.

From 1952 to 1958, the Cathedral’s brilliant fifth dean, the Very Reverend James Pike, made the Cathedral’s pulpit a voice to be listened to far beyond The Episcopal Church. He was one of the first religious leaders to appear regularly on national television. He regularly invited the congregation for discussion on television after the 11 am service. Dean Pike was a prophet, a priest, and a scholar. His views on racial segregation, birth control, capital punishment, the ordination of women, and the recognition and acceptance of homosexuals and lesbians gave him a national voice and a packed Cathedral.

PAMELA MORTON

THE REV. JESSE JACKSON

Jim Morton and I go back to the days when the mission of a generation was being born in the churches of America: when we prayed, preached, marched together, and put our hearts and souls on the line for civil rights and civil justice.

A Church Informed by Social Justic

Cathedral was very much a part of the movement. When the 1960s frieze Taking a Stand was added over the Great Bronze Doors, it was defaced with swastikas.

TOM FEDOREK

DEAN MORTON

PAMELA MORTON

THE REV. JESSE JACKSON

1967, A Stunning Announcement

DEAN KOWALSKI The Civil Rights movement was the real test of faith in our time. We were marching, and the Church was trying to catch up. The Church was fighting itself about what position to take—either embracing civil rights or not. THE REV. CANON TOM MILLER

In the decade of John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Vietnam War, and civil rights marches, many people and groups were struggling to maintain a balance between attempting to draw strength from their ties with the traditional institutions from which these movements had sprung and, at the same time, to shake up and destabilize those same institutions.

THE REV. TOM PIKE

I was ordained at the Cathedral in 1963. I began my ministry feeling that justice was a legitimate concern for the religious community. I was adamantly committed to social justice as the reasonable expression of religious commitment. When Dr. King came out against the war in Vietnam, I remember being very nervous that he was confusing things— and that opposition to the war was going to dilute the Civil Rights movement. But I slowly began to realize that Dr. King was on target. That addressing this issue of the war was central to the soul and life of America. I moved as a parish priest from my opposition to racism to an opposition to the war in Vietnam. And I was not alone. People were marching and getting arrested. There was a lot of turmoil. Many people resented what the activists were doing. One of my star acolytes was killed in Vietnam. The funeral was held at my church. I think if the soldiers who came to that funeral had had loaded rifles they would have shot me right there in my own church. HONOR MOORE We were taken to demonstrations as children, but just my brother Paul went to the 1963 Jobs and Freedom March in Washington. My father had been in Mississippi, and he’d been around the Klan, the gunfire, and feared the violence. He had nine children and he didn’t want to be careless.

“During this long travail our ancestors spoke to us, and we listened, and we tried to make you hear life in our song but now it matters not at all to me whether you know what I am talking about— or not: I know why we are not blinded by your brightness, are able to see you, who cannot see us. I know why we are still here.” JAMES BALDWIN, INDUCTED INTO THE AMERICAN POETS CORNER, 2011 WAYNE KEMPTON Segregation and discrimination were on the forefront of the national consciousness. Housing projects were falling apart. Unemployment was skyrocketing. Bishop Donegan had a plan to finish the Cathedral. He was in the embryonic stages of fundraising. But Donegan stopped the construction. Instead, he put money into street and storefront community organizations that were helping their own neighborhoods. THE REV. TOM PIKE

Bishop Donegan followed the old tradition of a Prince Bishop. He lived in the days when the Bishop had a chauffeur and was driven around from place to place. We joked about someone pulling a subway token out, and Bishop Donegan asking, “What’s that coin?” But in 1967 he made the stunning announcement that donations for finishing St. John the Divine would be given instead to housing and development projects in Harlem. BISHOP HORACE WILLIAM BADEN DONEGAN We will not pour money into a building when our cities are burning. This unfinished Cathedral, towering as it does over our great and suffering metropolis, shall be the prophetic symbol that our society is still as rough-hewn, ragged, broken, and incomplete as the building itself.

PAMELA MORTON Selma changed everything. We used to bring our children to protests, but we never expected to be attacked. In 1965, the Selma kids were brutally beaten, and there was an immediate response. Selma was important. I would say very, very important. DEAN MORTON When we got the message about Selma, we just said, “Let’s go.” In hindsight, it was so decisive. We were there with Reverend Reeb, the Unitarian minister, the night he was shot. We got to know Dr. King and his staff in action. It was unforgettable.

Bishop Horace W. B. Donegan photographed with New York City Mayor John Lindsay. 22

1967, A Stunning Announcement

THE REV. TOM PIKE

Bishop Horace W. B. Donegan photographed with New York City Mayor John Lindsay. 22

The ’70s, the ’80s, and Then Some Bishop Paul Moore and Dean James Parks Morton were a partnership for their time, an era that saw the coming of environmental awareness, ongoing Vietnam protests, agitation for nuclear disarmament, second-wave feminism, and the rise of Gay Pride—tempered in the fires of AIDS. It was an era that called for activist and creative clergy.

Everything was Happening

MARY JANE BROCK Jim Morton and Paul Moore really put that place on the map. It was a tumultuous time and they were the right team to embrace those conversations. Jim Morton was a master marketer; he knew all the players and most of them were his friends. There was a certain allure to Jim Morton’s Era.

DEAN MORTON When Paul Moore was elected Bishop of New York he asked me to consider being the Dean of St. John. He said, “This place is dead. It needs to be turned around, and I think you’re crazy enough to do it.”

Paul Moore became Diocesan Bishop in 1972, it was pretty clear that things were going to be different. But nobody knew quite how different.

PAMELA MORTON Jim wanted to create a contemporary Cathedral, a sacred place where all sorts of things could happen, where people came together that you didn’t necessarily find in a church. Jim was given a lot of freedom. It was a very exciting time.

STEPHEN FACEY Paul Moore was one of the great liberal bishops. He had a real theological point of view, a focus about the Church being engaged. His preaching generated national interest.

DEAN MORTON The Cathedral came to life. The most extraordinary minds and spirits in the world began coming to the Cathedral because that’s what the Cathedral was supposed to be.

THE REV. TOM PIKE When

THE REV. CANON TOM MILLER

Moore, before becoming Bishop of New York, had served as Bishop Suffragan in Washington D.C., where he was close to the center of political power, had participated in public demonstrations, and grappled with the church’s ambivalence about taking politically controversial stands. Once elected Bishop of New York, Paul Moore— with his dynamic personality—became a forceful public advocate for peace and social justice and seemed determined that the Cathedral would be stage for civic engagement in its many forms by many means.

HONOR MOORE When he came to the Cathedral as Diocesan Bishop, my father had to contend with ministering to parishes as diverse as St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue and Reverend Bob Castle’s activist ministry in Harlem. THE REV. TOM PIKE

As Bishop, Paul Moore always thought his most creative action and perhaps his most extreme commitment to peace and civil rights was to appoint Jim Morton as Dean. Jim was a great gentleman and a great entrepreneur. He may not have been your ideal institutional figure, but he was a prophet. He drew people to him because he was so darn creative. Jim would dream things.

“The Very Reverend James Parks Morton, always larger than life and sometimes better.” HOWARD E. QUIRK THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN The

dean of a cathedral needs the gift of a good imagination because you need to imagine what’s possible, you need to imagine new things.

STEVEN C. ROCKEFELLER It was in this spirit of experimental innovation that Dean Morton opened wide the doors of the Cathedral to the Morningside Heights community and the larger world. He found creative ways to link sacred Christian tradition and practice with contemporary needs and aspirations. For many thousands of people from diverse cultures and religious traditions, the Cathedral became a unique spiritual center where they could awaken to and celebrate the liberating and unifying sacred presence within themselves and in and through all things. THE REV. CANON TOM MILLER The Cathedral of

St. John the Divine in the 1970s began a period of dynamic collaboration between religion and education, the arts, science, social awareness, and political advocacy.

The Cathedral and Diocesan staff, 1970s. 24

Everything was Happening

Paul Moore became Diocesan Bishop in 1972, it was pretty clear that things were going to be different. But nobody knew quite how different.

STEPHEN FACEY Paul Moore was one of the great liberal bishops. He had a real theological point of view, a focus about the Church being engaged. His preaching generated national interest.

DEAN MORTON The Cathedral came to life. The most extraordinary minds and spirits in the world began coming to the Cathedral because that’s what the Cathedral was supposed to be.

THE REV. TOM PIKE When

THE REV. CANON TOM MILLER

“The Very Reverend James Parks Morton, always larger than life and sometimes better.” HOWARD E. QUIRK THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN The

dean of a cathedral needs the gift of a good imagination because you need to imagine what’s possible, you need to imagine new things.

St. John the Divine in the 1970s began a period of dynamic collaboration between religion and education, the arts, science, social awareness, and political advocacy.

The Cathedral and Diocesan staff, 1970s. 24

A Place that Transformed Your World

WILLIAM BRYANT LOGAN Within a few months, the two men had given notice of the phenomenal energy that would propel the Cathedral into the national conscience. They were midwives of innovative self-help and outreach programs like the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, Homes for the Homeless, and Manhattan Valley Youth Outreach. They gathered artists of the stature of Leonard Bernstein, Paul Winter, Philippe Petit, Richard Westenberg, Godspell author John-Michael Tebelak, and poet Muriel Rukeyser. William Irwin Thompson and his Lindisfarne association began to function as a think-tank on the relations between the planet, society, and the divine, while visitors like the Dalai Lama, Bishop Tutu, ecologists Rene Dubos and James Lovelock, anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, Native American activist Vine DeLoria, UFW boss Cesar Chavez, and financial planner Felix Rohatyn all spoke from the pulpit. PAMELA MORTON The people with the most interesting ideas were not always clergy. Jim invited everyone to preach from Al Gore to Whoopi Goldberg. The themes were always universal, like food or climate. There were several on water: there was a series of sermons on “Homelessness,” and “Earth’s Sacred Voyage.” Jim has a strong liturgical understanding so he would introduce the speakers by connecting them to the readings from the day expanding on the Gospel. And the visiting speakers were in awe of being in that pulpit. They were usually very reverent, I would say inspired. DEAN MORTON Our Environmental Sundays gave St. John’s the name of “The Green Cathedral” and myself the “Green Dean.” Between 1975 and 1996, over 150 Green sermons were delivered by over 30 Green preachers: Mary Catherine Bateson, Carl Sagan, Lewis Thomas, Buckminster Fuller, and others.

Top Buckminster Fuller and the Cathedral's Green Team viewing Fuller's model for a proposed central tower. “During Dean Morton’s tenure there had been several models for finishing the Cathedral. Unbeknownst to most people, Buckminster Fuller did a model for completing the central tower.” stephen facey

Bottom Swami Satchidananda, spiritual adviser to the Beatles and opening speaker at Woodstock in 1969, at the Cathedral with Dean Morton on St. Francis Day. 26

“Worshippers wound through the cavernous Cathedral… on a recent Sunday, shaking tambourines, singing plainsong, and watching medieval mystery plays. In the basement, members of a mystical Islamic sect thumped their drums. Black feminists met in the Synod House.… Members of a Tai Chi workshop did oriental meditation exercises. These diverse activities reflect the changes that in recent months have given new life to one of New York’s best-known landmark institutions.” TIME MAGAZINE DEAN MORTON How could a 20th-century Episcopal Cathedral embrace the global diversity of New York? The jump-start came in 1974 when the United Nations and America’s oldest interfaith organization, The Temple of Understanding, together requested we host the 30th anniversary of the UN’s founding at the Cathedral. The event culminated with prayers by Mother Teresa and Hindu leader Sri Chinmoy. Our meeting UN Secretary General Kurt Waldheim resulted in the Cathedral’s Annual October United Nations Sunday.

When the Dalai Lama made his first trip to America, his first public address was at the Cathedral on Sunday, October 14, 1979. With Philip Glass at the organ, thousands of New Yorkers queued up to meet him. DIANNE DUBLER I remember being in a long, long line waiting for His Holiness’ blessing. We heard a commotion in the back and saw Andy Warhol and his entourage coming up the aisle. Andy stepped in front—cutting off everyone else, simply pushed his Polaroid in the Dalai Lama’s face, took a picture— with a flash—then walked away.

MADELEINE L’ENGLE A Green Cathedral meant that the Cathedral was concerned about what was happening in the city around it, in the United States, and on the planet. It meant we care about keeping the forests, that we care about pollution, the hole in the ozone layer, and that we take seriously God’s order that the people of God care for creation. TOM HURWITZ

Jim Morton never forgot this was still a church. Cathedral is an adjective; it modifies church, this was a Cathedral Church. It got very close to not being an Episcopal Church. But it was very, very much a church. The liturgy was ornate and gorgeous. Everything that the Cathedral stood for was deeply based in Christianity. Walking into this place was like walking into a holy mystery. It was walking into a place that transformed your world every time you went through the doors.

A Place that Transformed Your World

Bottom Swami Satchidananda, spiritual adviser to the Beatles and opening speaker at Woodstock in 1969, at the Cathedral with Dean Morton on St. Francis Day. 26

Here for the First Time

“Learn to do good, seek justice, correct DEAN MORTON Everything was happening. If oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, someone came in to the Cathedral and we saw plead the widow’s cause.” ISAIAH 1:17 that they had energy and agency, we tried to pull them in. It was about people saying, “Let’s do this.” Then we would find good leadership and they DEAN MORTON We were a tower of white Anglotook it from there. Saxon Protestantism in a Black, Puerto Rican, Cuban, and Dominican neighborhood. We had an extraordinarily varied constituency that we JOSÉ V. TORRES Jim was all over the place but had to answer to. Our first duty had to be serving we loved him. He would notoriously call late the community in which we live. We started at night and want a meeting. “Come on, let’s have the Manhattan Valley Youth Program, programs a talk.” He would brainstorm with you and for families and kids, food programs, a soup you would say yes. He was exciting, and he got kitchen, a men’s shelter, we even had a Cathedral us excited. Because of our youth programs, baseball team. In 1973, we founded the Urban we saw Black and Latino kids come in here for Homesteading Assistance Board, UHAB. At its the first time. 30th anniversary in 2003, UHAB recorded over 30,000 rehabilitated apartments. Homes for THE REV. SANDYE WILSON Jim Morton was the Homeless was conceived at the Cathedral deeply connected to the students. He was always in 1986 and initially financed by business leader looking at how you could connect the reality Leonard Stern. It still exists today, as one of change, and that included changes in the of the city’s largest private housing organization. Morningside and Harlem neighborhood and the The single largest Cathedral social-justice Cathedral demographics, with the gift of the arts. program was The Valley, a seven-day-a-week teenage counseling center started in 1978 THE REV. CANON TOM MILLER The Cathedral by John Bess and Alfonso Wyatt. At its peak, community responded directly to local needs. it served some 4,000 young people, largely As the area around the Cathedral became home from Harlem. to many Hispanic and Latino immigrants. And as homelessness became a critical issue throughout the city, St. John the Divine initiated what THE REV. JESSE JACKSON Jim took the lead would grow to be Cathedral Community Cares. on housing and homelessness. His were among Aspects of the mission included a shelter and the earliest initiatives for urban homesteading. feeding program, immigration advice services, His was one for the first churches in New York and the Crisis Intervention Center—a drop-in to shelter homeless men, even to bring them to the social service located in the base of the south tower. Cathedral’s pulpit. He is a man of the City in the best sense—the human city and the City of God.

Top Group photo of the Manhattan Valley Youth Program. Bottom The Rev. Mary Michael Simpson (center) with her sponsors, the Very Rev. James Parks Morton and Sister Andrea, at her ordination, January 9, 1977. 28

Here for the First Time

The Ordination of Women and LGBT Priests, 1977

HONOR MOORE The radical part of feminism was gearing up 1968-69, which is the same time that gay rights exploded. My father, having six daughters, was an early advocate for women’s ordination, but he thought that that great a change should take place within the settled processes of the Church. His mode had always been to introduce change from within a system in order to bring as many people as possible along. He was always radical but he was also pragmatic. His diction might not have been as radical as his attitude. He always had in mind that he was speaking to those who may have held another position. THE REV. SANDYE WILSON There

were rumblings and there were women who were pushing for ordination to happen. But up until the late 1970s, women’s ordination was not a reality in The Episcopal Church. I wasn’t called to be a deacon. I wasn’t called to be a nun. I did not believe in poverty, chastity, or obedience, so I probably would have gotten thrown out of the convent. I felt called to be a priest and I was just waiting for the God of surprises to help to make it happen

When those first women, the Philadelphia 11, got ordained in the summer of 1974, they couldn’t get ordained in your regular white cathedral of The Episcopal Church. They were ordained in a Black church in Philadelphia. HONOR MOORE When the first 11 women were ordained—not through the system—my father was furious. He later understood that the renegade ordination had been the right step, that the more radical women and the participating bishops had been right. WAYNE KEMPTON The first woman to be ordained a priest in the Diocese of New York was the Rev. Carol Linda Anderson in January 1977. This ordination was followed quickly by Julia Sibley, Mary Michael Simpson, Isabel Carter Heyward, Ellen Barrett, Annette Ruark, Barbara Schlachter, Fleming Rutledge, and Sister Columba Gilliss.

Top The Ordination of the Rev. Sandye Wilson. Front: the Rev. Martha Blacklock, the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, the Rev. Pauli Murray, the Rev. Canon Susan Harriss. Middle: the Rev. Canon Jimmye Kimmey, the Rev. Jackie Schmidt, the Rev. Ellen Barrett, the Rev. Canon Jane Henderson. Back: the Rev. Sandye Wilson, the Rt. Rev. Gayle Harris, and the Rev. Susan Schaeffer. Bottom The ordination of the Rev. Mary Michael Simpson, January 9, 1977. 30

REBECCA MERRILL Among the nine women ordained that January was the Rev. Ellen Barrett, a founding member and first co-president of Integrity, an organization formed to advocate the participation of lesbians, gays, and bisexuals in The Episcopal Church. Ellen Barrett was the first openly acknowledged lesbian priest of the American Episcopalian church. BISHOP MOORE I had been through many crises both during the Civil Rights days and in the peace movement. I was used to criticism and knew that it was part of being a bishop. I had no idea, however, that the reaction to the ordination of Ellen Barrett would be more violent and last longer than all the rest of such experiences put together. Loyalties, betrayals, anger, sorrow, now joy and relief. It all came flooding out.

THE REV. SANDYE WILSON

In 1980, I was the first Black woman ordained at the Cathedral. Pauli Murray, the first Black woman ordained in America, presented me. Pauli Murray was a friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, a founder of the National Organization of Women, a professor of constitutional law at Yale and at Brandeis. She argued before the United States Supreme Court. Ruth Bader Ginsberg said that she would not be on the Court now had it not been for Pauli. The second Black woman ordained in America was Mary Adabanajo of the Diocese of Pennsylvania. Mary produced the first Afro-centric Sunday School curriculum in The Episcopal Church by a Black priest. She was one of the people in my ordination service. The third Black woman ordained in the nation was Barbra Harris, who went on to become the first woman bishop of any color in the WorldWide Anglican Communion. Barbara Harris was the Bishop’s Chaplain in my ordination. Gayle Harris—now Suffragan Bishop of Massachusetts— was the deacon at my service. That ordination has become a legend of history. BISHOP MARY GLASSPOOL If you were a lesbian, it was a huge mixed message. It was okay to be a woman and be ordained, but it was not okay to be gay and ordained. And you had to separate gay men from lesbians because the gender differences were applicable. The church had always had gay men—always, from time immemorial. The question was, were we honest about it or were we open about it? REBECCA MERRILL It was a time of massive progressive change in The Episcopal Church and at the Cathedral. As the saying goes, though, hindsight is 20/20, and we’ve now heard troubling stories of what was happening behind the scenes. While Bishop Moore wielded his position to enact necessary and important changes in the culture of the church, it seems he also crossed boundaries in his personal relationships in inappropriate ways. BISHOP GLASSPOOL It’s difficult to know that your heroes, especially heroes of your childhood, had clay feet or were imperfect. The recent public revelation of Paul Moore’s sexual misconduct and abuse of power has highlighted some of the changes in the Diocese. It is worth saying, and it is worth repeating, that we didn’t get here overnight and the healing is not going to come overnight. It’s a process, it’s a journey. It’s going to be gradual. He is not the only one. We need to be discerning about what is productive and helpful to raise out of the past, what will be healing, and what we may need to correct the narrative around but also let go of. We’re asked to deal with that complexity.

The Ordination of Women and LGBT Priests, 1977

THE REV. SANDYE WILSON

Art and Advocacy

DEAN MORTON The other aspect of what we were doing was about intellectual, literary, and artistic New York. We gave the Big Apple Circus its first residence in 1977. In 1978 we began to invite visual and performing artists to become Cathedral Artists in Residence. Our first New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace in 1983 paired Leonard Bernstein with Odetta. Muriel Rukeyser initiated the Poetry Wall with poems written by both children and prisoners from all over the country. A sign invited readers to write to the poets—and many did, and some important and compassionate relationships were born. We established The American Poets Corner in 1984. STEPHEN FACEY Jim was following the belief that artists and civic activists, in concert with the religious community, are among the people in society doing sacred work. PHILIPPE PETIT

I believe I was the first person to become a Cathedral Artist in Residence. It is something extremely important and inspiring in my life. I’ve associated myself with this church for almost four decades. My heart, my home, is the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

GRIFFIN DUNNE My introduction to St. John was sort of celebrity-oriented. I was invited to be a speaker at the 1982 Nuclear Disarmament Rally, it was huge. I remember how vast St. John’s was, and how full it was, thousands and thousands of people. We all wore t-shirts with everybody’s name listed: Peter, Paul and Mary; Joan Baez; Bob Dylan; Patti Smith; Susan Sarandon; Bonnie Raitt; James Taylor; Jackson Browne; Bruce Springsteen—everybody was listed except me. I went through the shirt like three times to see if my eyes were deceiving me. They were not.

WAYNE KEMPTON During Morton’s time these grounds looked like the infield of the Indianapolis 500 with cars parked in every direction. It was extremely open with a lot of people: a couple on the grass; groups outside—here, there, and in every room—all the windows wide open, and usually with somebody hanging out of them. Not every churchman appreciated Moore’s activism and Morton’s eccentricities. BOB PENNOYER I served on the Cathedral Board for nine years. I was there because I liked Jim Morton and I liked Paul Moore and I believed in what they were doing. In the early years, Jim did not pay much attention to the budget. We never knew what Jim was going to do next. He didn’t care; he just spent the money. Finally we told him we had to have a budget approved by the Board and he had to stay within the budget. Things improved after that.

"I believe everything we dream can come to pass through our union we can turn the world around we can turn the earth's revolution we have the power People have the power" PATTI SMITH AND FRED “SONIC” SMITH

The June 12, 1982 National March and Rally for Nuclear Disarmament. Approximately one million people marched in New York City against nuclear arms and an end to the arms race and the Cold War. It was the largest political demonstration in American history. A celebrity-packed kickoff concert for the March was held at the Cathedral. 32

Art and Advocacy

Celebration and Sorrow

DEAN MORTON In 1976, the Trustees made the decision to continue building the Cathedral and to train young people to be apprentice stonecutters and carvers—particularly young minority women and men from our community. Over the next three years enough stone had been cut and carved to begin the construction of the southwest Tower of St. Paul. GREG WYATT Approaching the Cathedral, I would hear the stone masons, “tap tap tap.” That sound and that construction caught the imagination of everyone in New York. To hear the metal hammers chisel stone in the cutting yard and witness this master achievement being built here in New York City was remarkable. DEAN MORTON On September 29, 1982, the great moment took place. All heads looked up to where Philippe Petit was set to walk the high wire to secure the cornerstone in our new tower. PHILIPPE PETIT I strung a wire 16 stories high, crossing Amsterdam Avenue to the South Tower, to celebrate the renewal of the Cathedral construction after a 41-year building hiatus. I crossed the sky carrying the same golden trowel that had been used for the first cornerstone in 1892. HOWARD RUBENSTEIN

York City in its tracks.

Philippe stopped New

PAMELA MORTON The

1980s were a time of celebration and sorrow. The AIDS crisis in New York was enormous. People needed a place to be able to lay their concerns and their mourning. BRAD GOOCH

People were dying of AIDS who were close to the Cathedral, including many priests in this Diocese. Before it had been one of those “don’t ask, don’t tell” situations, but AIDS blew that apart. We were all in it.

DEAN MORTON It is a large volume in which the names of those who had died of AIDS are inscribed. Beside the lectern and memorial book is a tall memorial candle that burned night and day. The names of all New York AIDS victims were also honored in the annual AIDS Memorial Concert. The Memorial and the Concert were powerful and deeply moving projects.

“As a person with AIDS, I’m alone with my illness and my fear. But the feeling of being alone is different in the Cathedral…. This space is alive because so much life has gone into it. All the belief and a sincerity and warmth that people have given it fills the place... The Cathedral is strong enough to allow me to be weak. It’s one of the only places I have ever felt safe.” MARK REYNOLDS ELIE WIESEL Under Jim Morton’s leadership, the Cathedral became an oasis of beauty in a city of violence, an instrument of dialogue and religious reconciliation in a time of hatred and intolerance. Of human beings like James Morton, there are all too few. To be human is to see what others see, to break one’s solitude: our worst enemy. Jim felt the anguish of the survivors, encouraged our questions, and respected our silence. THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN

People used to say that Jim Morton was the Pied Piper for all the crazies in New York City, and he totally was. Just totally. But that’s what made him great. PAMELA MORTON There were people who thought that Jim never said no and that maybe he should have. DEAN MORTON

Oh? I don’t think so...

PAMELA MORTON In 1985 the AIDS Memorial was established in the Cathedral’s Medical Bay. There were benefits by the Gay Men’s Health Chorus, the Cathedral hosted the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and of course, the AIDS Book of Remembrance. When people heard about the book, they came from all over the country to write in it.

Top The Cathedral’s stoneworkers. Bottom left Governor Mario Cuomo representing New York State’s Job Development Agency, mid-1980s. Bottom middle The laying of the foundation stone, atop the south tower. Philippe Petit, Bishop Moore, and Dean Morton, September 29, 1982. Bottom right The AIDS Memorial. 34

Celebration and Sorrow

York City in its tracks.

Philippe stopped New

PAMELA MORTON The

1980s were a time of celebration and sorrow. The AIDS crisis in New York was enormous. People needed a place to be able to lay their concerns and their mourning. BRAD GOOCH

Oh? I don’t think so...

9/11 and the Fire, 2001 The attacks on September 11 resonated around the world, but the people of New York City lived it: the images of buildings we knew, the fire visible for months, the countless small memorials at fire stations and parks, the placards seeking missing loved ones. Weeks later, the Cathedral itself was threatened by a devastating fire.

The City Reached Out for Prayer

“The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.” W. H. AUDEN, INDUCTED INTO THE AMERICAN POETS CORNER, 2005 THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN

On the morning of 9/11 we started tolling the bells. We didn’t stop until six that night. Everybody was out in the streets and people were streaming in to the Cathedral. STEPHEN FACEY Within hours, we cleared the gym to use as a blood bank and Synod Hall for use as a morgue. Thankfully, this proved unnecessary, but the resident clergy decided to keep the Cathedral open around the clock and hold evening services for as long as necessary.

KEITH HINKSON We’ve always had a very close relationship with the fire department. There is an engine company right across the street on 113th Street. The Cathedral's Firefighters Memorial became a place to come for the whole city. THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN The

Cathedral is in the middle of Manhattan; it is on one of the highest points of the Island. It became the spiritual crossroads of the city. On the Sunday after 9/11, people just flocked here.

STEPHEN FACEY In the Narthex there is an Altar for Peace cut from a huge American walnut tree by George Nakashima. That Altar was a daily gathering place for folks to leave notes, photos, and newsprint messages and poems for months after 9/11.

KEITH HINKSON 9/11 is a vivid memory for everyone that lived through it. At that point, I was MEREDITH BERGMANN The pervasive fellowship the Assistant Director of Security. Immediately that many of us shared after the attacks, the pure, after the planes hit, we saw a huge uptick of traffic sharp gratitude for the living people around us has at the Cathedral. People started coming in record faded. But I still feel that spirit in the way people numbers; I mean they were coming in day and treat each other in this building. night and it stayed that way for days. We stayed open 24 hours a day. The readiness and willingness “After 9/11 we need your kind of ministering to leave these doors open at a time when the more than we have in a long time. Now more city reached out for prayer was a decision made than ever, we need the Cathedral, harnessing the without hesitation, without regard to how we were energies of love through thousands of beautiful going to staff it, security-wise or maintenance-wise. acts of kindness and generosity. I believe God It was going to happen no matter what it took. has blessed us with your presence. Deo Gratias. Shalom. Salaam Alaikum. Peace.” JENNIFER DORR WHITE My husband John and I GOVERNOR MARIO CUOMO AT THE INSTALLATION both had a need to be in community with people. OF THE VERY REV. DR. JAMES A. KOWALSKI, 2002 We heard that there was going to be a gathering at the Cathedral. I remember people needing to GEOFF SMITH The aftershocks of 9/11 lasted for be together sitting in a circle crying. a long time. We were still reeling in December, still reading the stories of the lost and learning the details of the attack. And then, a much smaller TOM HURWITZ There were special masses for tragedy, but one that felt like an echo: the fire at weeks. It was very profound and very necessary. the Cathedral. The stories of the fire continue to haunt everyone here. STEPHEN FACEY Until 9/11 the largest number of firefighters lost in a single event was the 12 firefighters of the 1966 Madison Square fire. There is a memorial in the Cathedral’s Labor Bay honoring them. Two or three days after 9/11, it was announced that over 343 firefighters, 60 police officers, and 8 paramedics had been lost. September 11, 2001. 36

The City Reached Out for Prayer

“The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.” W. H. AUDEN, INDUCTED INTO THE AMERICAN POETS CORNER, 2005 THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN

Cathedral is in the middle of Manhattan; it is on one of the highest points of the Island. It became the spiritual crossroads of the city. On the Sunday after 9/11, people just flocked here.

Fire

STEPHEN FACEY At dawn, on Tuesday, December 18, I was called by security alerting me to a fire in the North Transept. When I arrived, there was a lot of smoke penetrating the Cathedral. The flames had engulfed the entire space. MARIE DEL TEJO I was walking up Amsterdam Avenue and saw the fire. My heart dropped. There were firefighters everywhere. JENNIFER DORR WHITE It started at 6 am. We were getting ready to take our daughter Hannah to school at the Cathedral but then something was on the news. The Cathedral was on fire. It was awful. We saw it and we were all imagining that we were about to lose this building that meant so much to us. It went on for 12 hours. KEITH HINKSON

Because of 9/11, everyone thought it was a terrorist act. By the time I got in, they had shut down the streets, 110th to 113th and all the traffic going down Amsterdam Avenue. “The intense heat shattered several stainedglass windows, and orange towers of fire leapt 40 feet in the air, as the cavernous sanctuary was filled from floor to vaulted ceiling with a haze of inky smoke…. The firefighters treated the Cathedral tenderly. They refrained from smashing the stained-glass windows, a measure that would have vented the fire and made conditions less smoky. They used heat sensors to detect flames to cut down on the amount of water used.” CATHEDRAL ARCHIVES STEPHEN FACEY The fire department’s action saved the important elements of the Nave, the Baptistery, and even the elaborate wood carvings of the Great Choir stalls. The flames did, however, seriously damage two tapestries hanging at that time.

Top December 18, 2001. Bottom left The 1925 Ralph Adams Cram model of the Cathedral that had been placed in Grand Central Station, destroyed by the fire. Bottom upper right Former President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, and Keith Hinkson, December 24, 2001.

MARLENE EIDELHEIT Those of us who work in the Textile Conservation Lab waited on 113th Street watching the fire burn for hours and hours. People would come out of the Cathedral and say, “The tapestries are okay.” Then someone would say, “They’re gone.” We had no way of knowing what was happening. The fireman let me in at about 11 pm. It was dark. The electricity was off. The Cathedral was filled with smoke. You couldn’t see across the nave. The tapestries had fallen down and were gathered like two huge wet rags on tables. Just these big dark wet rags, all crumbled up. The Last Supper had burned from the top down. Most of the Apostles’ heads were burnt away. But Christ’s head was still there; you could still see some of the nimbus radiating light. In the second tapestry, The Resurrection, only Christ’s figure had been burned away.

JOSÉ V. TORRES

I see the Cathedral as a living organism. It’s not just a building. It reflects certain times, certain moments, and history. You feel it. Those of us who had been here a long time really grieved that this “being” could be hurt that way. A lot of us cried when we saw what had happened. STEVEN FACEY Late in the day, a young man introduced himself as the Mayor’s Office of Emergency Managements staff person. He had ordered huge pumpers on 111th Street to get the water out of the Cathedral’s basement. Our basement houses the boiler plant for the Close. Beneath it is a huge sub-basement, perhaps 20-30 feet deep, created during the original construction. The water there was within a foot of the boilers. Without those pumpers the Cathedral would have been out of business for months. The fire department’s performance was extraordinary.

The Cathedral was always an important place for the local fire department. They went there on their breaks to pray. JAKE MAYER EISNER

DEAN KOWALSKI I never doubted that we would get the Cathedral back. I saw the faces of the firefighters and the people on the street that terrible day. Their reverence and love made clear their commitment to the Cathedral. THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN The

fire happened exactly a week before Christmas. We wanted to open for the Christmas service. We were in there scrubbing down every single chair of soot. Thankfully, the stars aligned, and the Cathedral opened. JENNIFER DORR WHITE We

didn’t know what to expect. We went to the Christmas Eve service and the smell of the smoke was so strong but I remember everybody was there, just sitting there on Christmas Eve being so grateful that the Cathedral had survived. KEITH HINKSON There was such a strong smell of smoke that we left the Cathedral doors open all day and night for a week. We managed to air it out so that we could have services for Christmas. That year former President Clinton and Hillary and Chelsea came in a show of support for the Cathedral.

THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN

I got a call that Hillary Clinton, our Senator at the time, would like to attend Christmas Eve services. Hillary came, the President came, and Chelsea Clinton came. I saw about 15 of our local firefighters in the Cathedral. At the Offertory the firefighters came up, and the Cathedral went berserk. The worshipers had gone berserk over the Clintons, but then when the firefighters came up the whole place erupted with applause, cheers, tears.

Bottom lower right New York firefighters honored at the Cathedral. 38

125 Years and Counting

Fire

JOSÉ V. TORRES

The Cathedral was always an important place for the local fire department. They went there on their breaks to pray. JAKE MAYER EISNER

THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN

Bottom lower right New York firefighters honored at the Cathedral. 38

125 Years and Counting

Fire

JOSÉ V. TORRES

The Cathedral was always an important place for the local fire department. They went there on their breaks to pray. JAKE MAYER EISNER

THE REV. CANON JAY WEGMAN

Bottom lower right New York firefighters honored at the Cathedral. 38

125 Years and Counting

1828 The Rt. Rev. John Henry Hobart, Bishop of New York, consults with Mayor Philip Hone about the feasibility of building an Episcopal Cathedral in New York City.

1911 Consecration of the Chapel of St. Columbia, the Great Choir and the Crossing. Ralph Adams Cram is hired to complete the Cathedral.

1854 The Rt. Rev. Horatio Potter succeeds Bishop Hobart.

1922 Installation of the Historical Parapet, depicting figures in the history of Christianity.

The Very Rev. William Mercer Grosvenor is named the Cathedral’s first Dean.

1872 Bishop Potter takes the lead by suggesting to the Episcopalian Diocesan Convention that it is time to build an American Cathedral.

1887 Bishop Potter dies and is succeeded by his nephew, the Rt. Rev. Henry Codman Potter, who begins to solicit financial support for construction of the Cathedral.

1913 The Cathedral School building is constructed to accommodate 45 resident choristers.

1928 Consecration of the Baptistery.

1914 Consecration of the Chapel of St. Ambrose.

An 11.5-acre site is acquired for the Cathedral atop the plateau known as Morningside Heights. 1891 George Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge win a three-year architecture competition to design Cathedral. Their eclectic design features Romanesque, Byzantine, and Gothic elements.

1930 New York Times publisher Adolph Ochs donates two 12-foot tall menorahs to flank the High Altar as an acknowledgement of the Cathedral’s efforts to improve JewishChristian relations. 1916 Consecration of the Chapels of St. James and St. Boniface.

The Very Rev. Milo Hudson Gates is named the third Dean.

Work begins on the foundation for the Nave but is suspended due to shortage of funds.

1892 Bishop Potter lays the cornerstone on St. John’s Day, December 27. 1893 Excavation begins for the foundation of the apse.

1917 The Very Rev. Howard Chandler Robbins is named the second Dean of the Cathedral.

The Very Rev. James Parks Morton is named the seventh Dean. Bishop Moore and Dean Morton expand the Cathedral’s advocacy of peace, social justice, and the environment.

1950 Bishop Gilbert dies and is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. Horace Donegan. 1952 The Very Rev. James Albert Pike is named the fifth Dean. Under Dean Pike and Bishop Donegan, the Cathedral’s pulpit becomes a forum for important national issues such as civil rights, McCarthyism and the Cold War.

1954 The Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company expands the Great Organ from its original 5,000 pipes to the present size of 8,035 pipes arranged in 141 ranks. The State Trumpets are mounted on the wall at the west end of the Nave. 1956 The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preaches at an ecumenical service.

1932 The Rose Window is installed.

1985 Artist in Residence Greg Wyatt creates Peace Fountain in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. 1986 Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaks at the Cathedral. 1989 Thousands attend the memorial service for choreographer Alvin Ailey.

1947 Bishop Manning retires and is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. Charles Gilbert.

1960 The Very Rev. John Vernon Butler is named the sixth Dean.

1899 The first services are held in a chapel of the crypt.

1972 Bishop Donegan retires and is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. Paul Moore, Jr.

1945 Thousands fill the Cathedral for services of thanksgiving for the end of the war. 1925 Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a Cathedral Trustee, chairs a fundraising drive.

1873 New York State legislature grants a Charter for The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. Economic depression delays selection of a site for the Cathedral.

1942 Five tons of Cathedral scrap metal are donated for the war effort, including wrought iron railings. The Cathedral accepts silver altar vessels from London’s Chapel Royal for safekeeping during the war, giving rise to the urban legend that the Cathedral housed the Crown Jewels.

Bishop Moore retires and is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. Richard Grein. 1973 The Cathedral School becomes co-educational.

1974 Duke Ellington’s funeral is attended by jazz luminaries and 12,500 mourners. 1976 Bishop Moore preaches a headline-making Easter sermon in which he challenges corporations to keep their operations in New York rather than join others who have fled to other states, thus worsening the city’s fiscal crisis. 1978 Dean Morton announces plans to revive construction of the Cathedral, halted in 1941. Local youth are recruited as apprentice stonecutters for the Cathedral stoneyard.

1990 Vaclav Havel, playwright and president of the newly-liberated Czech Republic, is guest of honor at a gala concert. Big Bird and other Muppets pay tribute to puppeteer Jim Henson at his memorial service in the Cathedral.

1992 The Congregation of St. Saviour is formed.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama pays the first of many visits to the Cathedral.

1992 The Cathedral marks its centennial with an architectural competition calling for designs that explore connections between ecology and spirituality. Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava wins the competition with a design incorporating greenhouselike structures to serve as North and South Transepts and a glass-enclosed arboretum atop the Nave.

1982 The Cathedral establishes a soup kitchen and overnight shelter.

1993 Lack of funding halts construction of the South Tower.

Artist in Residence Philippe Petit walks a wire strung across Amsterdam Avenue to the Cathedral’s West Front to inaugurate the new South Tower building program.

1997 The Very Rev. Harry H. Pritchett, Jr. is named eighth Dean.

1979 Construction resumes.

1983 Leonard Bernstein conducts the first New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace.

1901 The Cathedral School is founded as a boarding school for the boys in the Cathedral’s choir.

1918 Consecration of the Chapels of St. Angsar and St. Martin.

1903 The eight massive granite columns to support the Cathedral’s East End are transported from a quarry in Maine and hoisted into place.

1937 A model of a slum tenement dwelling is exhibited in the Nave to publicize the need for decent housing in New York. 1939 The first services are conducted in the Nave. 1940 The Very Rev. James P. DeWolfe is named the fourth Dean.

1907 George Heins dies, thus breaking his firm’s design contract with the Cathedral. 1908 The roof for the Great Choir is completed.

1919 Bishop Greer dies and is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. Charles Sumner Burch.

Bishop Potter dies and is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. David Greer.

1920 Bishop Burch dies and is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. William Thomas Manning. Bishop Manning applies himself to the reactivation of the building and fundraising campaigns.

1909 Rafael Guastavino constructs a tile dome for the Crossing, intended as a temporary roof. The dome covers the Crossing to the present day and is one of the largest freestanding domes in the world. 1910 Ernst Skinner begins building the Great Organ.

1941 The entire length of the Cathedral is consecrated on November 30. One week later, the attack on Pearl Harbor halts work on the Cathedral as the country enters World War II.

1964 Six thousand attend an ecumenical service to support civil rights legislation and to call for an end to racial segregation. 1968 Madeleine L’Engle publishes The Young Unicorns, a novel for young adults set at the Cathedral.

Duke Ellington premieres his Second Sacred Concert at the Cathedral.

1969 A solemn litany listing names of U.S. soldiers killed in action is part of a nationwide protest against the escalating war in Vietnam. 1971 ACT, an after-school and summer program for community children, is established. Cathedral dramaturg John-Michael Tebelek adapts the Gospel of Matthew into the hit musical Godspell with composer Stephen Shwartz. The musical celebrates its first and second anniversaries and final performance with special liturgies at the Cathedral.

1984 The Cathedral hosts the first annual Feast of Saint Francis and Blessing of the Animals. The service includes the music of Artist in Residence Paul Winter and Paul Halley’s Missa Gaia/Earth Mass. Saint Francis Day continues to be one of the largest services at the Cathedral, drawing visitors from all over the world.

Inauguration of The American Poets Corner in the Arts Bay, dedicated to American writers. Edwina Sandys’ Christa, a sculpture of a female Christ on a crucifix, is displayed during Holy Week and taken down early after causing a small but historical controversy. The piece returns to the Cathedral as part of The Christa Project in 2016.

2005 More than 1,000 people fill the Crossing for an anti-war rally to hear activist Cindy Sheehan on the Bring Them Home Now Tour.

2017 The Cathedral is officially designated a historic landmark by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Post-fire cleaning and restoration of the Cathedral’s interior begins in the east end and chapels.

Newly restored baroque tapestries are installed for the first time for the exhibition The Barberini Tapestries: Woven Monuments of the Baroque Rome.

2006 The Cathedral enters into an agreement with a real estate investment trust, leasing land for the construction of a residential building with twenty percent affordable housing units to the south of the Cathedral. Restoration and the removal of scaffolding renders the upper 55 feet of the South Tower visible for the first time in 15 years. 2008 Thousands of people attend a rededication service and celebration in honor of the reopening of the entire length of the Cathedral. Guests at the service include New York Senators Hillary R. Clinton and Charles E. Schumer, Cardinal Edward Egan, and firefighters who battled the 2001 fire.

2010 The Cathedral's “Enter the Conversation” series hosts guests such as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Gwen Ifill, Michelle Norris, Karen Armstrong, and Wangari Maathai, among others. 2011 The Value of Water: Sustaining a Green Planet opens, ushering in a new wave of large-scale art exhibitions, including Jane Alexander: Surveys (From the Cape of Good Hope) (2013), The Phoenix Project: Xu Bing at the Cathedral (2014), The Value of Food (2015-2016), and The Christa Project (2016-2017). The Cathedral reestablishes its gift shop for the first time since the fire in the 2001. The Cathedral commemorates the ten-year anniversary of 9/11 by offering “A Day of Community, A Day of Faith,” which includes four services, a “Spotlight on Spirit” tour, and music, readings, and messages of hope from local, national, and international guests. Music Director Kent Tritle revives the “Great Music in a Great Space” program, an annual series of choral, organ, and orchestral concerts.

South African president Nelson Mandela speaks at a memorial service for antiapartheid activist Archbishop Trevor Huddleston.

2013 The Rt. Rev. Andrew M.L. Dietsche succeeds Bishop Sisk.

2001 Hundreds spontaneously congregate at the Cathedral within hours of the terrorist attacks on September 11. A six-alarm fire in December destroys the North Transept and the gift shop within it. Bishop Grein is succeeded by the Rt. Rev. Mark S. Sisk. 2002 The Very Rev. Dr. James A. Kowalski is installed as the ninth Dean of the Cathedral. Plans for post-fire restoration begin.

2014 The Cathedral hosts “Religions for the Earth: A Multifaith Celebration” following the People’s Climate March. 2015 The Cathedral Choristers record a breathtaking version of “Silent Night” with Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo and American musical group The Piano Guys. 2016 Over the course of the year, Cathedral Community Cares reaches a new record, offering 26,000 meals to 68,580 clients at its Sunday Soup Kitchen.

Aretha Franklin gives her final public performance as part of the twenty-fifth anniversary celebration of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. The annual Cathedral Craft Fair, sponsored by the Congregation, moves after twenty-five years from Synod Hall to the Cathedral itself, becoming a signature program. 2018 Phase one of renovation of the North Transept is complete. The Rt. Rev. Clifton Daniel III is installed as the tenth Dean.

The Cathedral celebrates the 125th anniversary of the laying of its cornerstone with a special evensong on November 18th. During the service, the Most Rev. Michael Curry, the 27th Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church, is seated in the International Ecumenical Cathedra and preaches his message of love.

2019 In the midst of heightened attacks on the rights of immigrants and people seeking asylum, the Cathedral opened its doors, working with The Episcopal Diocese to provide resources and connect with activist organizations in New York City and at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Value of Sanctuary: Building a House Without Walls, an exhibition featuring the work of more than 30 modern and contemporary artists, explored the political and social issues of this complex period in American history through the context of the Cathedral’s own ever-evolving American legacy. 2020 and Beyond After years of study, a team of architects arrived at an elegant solution for rehabilitating the Cathedral’s massive, vaulted dome. A new bronze-hued copper exterior covering was added to the structure’s existing granite dome, which was initially intended as a temporary roof and had remained in place for over 100 years, preserving the Cathedral’s magnificent structure for years to come. Dreaming and planning is underway for the completed rennovation of the North Transept, a reimagined Cathedral Crypt, and a restored Synod Hall. The Cathedral commits to continue advancing environmental stewardship through increasing its energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions related to its operations as well as using its religious, civic and cultural voice to seek an ethical system that can grow and protect the wellbeing of humans, wildlife, and the planet.