The Daily Ardmoreite. [volume] (Ardmore, Okla.) 1893-current, 1911-04-19
THE LARGEST ECCLESIASTICAL
STRUCTURE IN AMERICA CON-
SECRATED IN NEW YORK.
COST TEN MILLION DOLLARS
Big Cathedral, When Completed, Will
Have Seating Capacity of Seven
Thousand and Be Practically In
destructible.

New York, April 19.-The Episco
pal Cathedral of st. John the Di
vine, the largest ecclesiastical struc
ture in the country and the fourth
largest in Christendom, was solemn
" consecrated here today. Although
only partially constructed it has al
ready been twenty years in building,
at cost of $3,5OO,OOO and it may
take as much longer to complete 1t,
at total estimated cost of 100000.
600.
Seating accommodations are now
provided for about LOO persons, but
although consecrated for present use,
four-filths of the work remains to be
done, and the full capacity will ap.
proach 1000. At present the in
terror walls stand in great part as
they were laid, in jutting tiers of
rough granite the vaulted roof of
the crossing is only a makeshift
OF terra Gotta to be torn down later;
the arches from watch the trans
cepts will spread are blocked with
temporary concrete battles; the floor
ing itself is but cement bed on
which the mosaics will yet be SUI
perimposed; only hint of the full
glory appears-and yet SO noble is
the harmony of the ample dimen-
sions, and so rich the promise OF
fulfillment. that the fragment open.
ed to the public today is itself an
invitation to worship.
How has this mighty undertaking
been financed" asks Canon Robert
Ellis Jones. by the same devotion
and sacrifice he answers, which
actuated the best of the mediaeval
cathedral builders. The cathedral has
no official source of revenue. No
organized effort has been made to
draw on the interest of Episcopa.
lians, and yet gifts of all sizes have
flowed in, from all quarters. Five
dollars come each year from a seam
stress up the Hudson. The inmate
librarian of city refuge gave one
tenth of his salary, and a dozen
old men in a church home earned
by making nets and hammocks $3.50.
which they begged might be built
into the cathedral"
A revenue thus derived cannot be
estimated in advance, but bequests
are now known which, as they ma
ture, will be sufficient to insure con
tinued progress. The choir is now
rooted and partly cased with the
limestone which will later finish
the entire interior. '+he eight giant
columns, each Go fect nigh, exclusive
OF the capitals, which cluster about
the altar, between the ambulatory
and the chancel, are in place, with
the names carved upon them of those
whom their donors wish to commem-
crate.
In style the cathedral is late Ro-
with strong traces of
byzantine influences, or as the ar
chitect in chief, C. Grant LaIF'argo, a
son of the late John LaFargo, de-
scribes it, 80 far as the cathedral
in the larger sense is Gothic, it is
the Gothic of a very early period;
the time of transition from the sim
pile Romanesque to the more complex
Nowhere is the construct
i've scheme based on the pointed
arch.
The site is the most commanding
in the city, on what once was the
battlefield of Harlem Heights, over
loking the main plain of Manhattan,
the Hudson river and Long Island
Sound. 1t occupies three city blocks,
bounded by 10th and 18th street to
north and south an6 MoIningside