Modern Divine?

As cathedrals go, the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine, atop Manhattan's Morningside Heights, has turned out to be a slowpoke. Begun 62 years ago, it has been abuilding almost as long as Paris' Notre Dame (72 years), is still only two-thirds completed. When finished, St. John's will be well buttressed with superlatives. Its nave already encloses the longest unbroken vista in Christendom. In overall size it will be second only to St. Peter's in Rome. But with $16 million already spent, St. John's still lacks its twin portal towers and south transept. Its daring center cross section, 10,000 sq. ft., has been roofed over since 1909 with a temporary terra-cotta dome that was guaranteed for only ten years. Completion of the cathedral (no major work has been done since the outbreak of World War II) would take another 14 years and an additional $15 million.

Last week James M. Fitch, associate professor of architecture at neighboring Columbia University, came forward with a bold proposal to solve St. John's lingering troubles. Writing in the December ARCHITECTURAL FORUM, he argued the case for finishing the cathedral in modern style. "The task of completing a half-finished cathedral must have always posed thorny problems for the people involved," he wrote. "Even with the slow movement of Gothic times, and certainly with the accelerated pace of the Renaissance, there was always that change in belief and attitude, that shift in intellectual perspectives, which underlies all artistic development . . . The cathedral [of St. John the Divine] should be finished . . . in a thoroughly contemporary idiom, just as cathedrals have always been."

Fitch suggested that the central tower marking the cathedral crossing "might be of open metalwork, echoing the George Washington Bridge towers up the river. It might be a ring of tall masts from which the crossing roof could be suspended . . . It might be a light shell of molded concrete or a lacework of aluminum and stained glass." Fitch thinks that the planned south transept might well be abandoned, to be replaced by a huge (100 ft. by 150 ft.) glass window of contemporary design.

Anticipating that lovers of pure Gothic would view this modern incursion as far worse than the Vandals' sack of Rome, Fitch observed that the cathedral had already gone through two major restylings. The original design, by C. Grant La Farge in 1891, had been an eclectic mixture of Gothic, Romanesque and Byzantine. The late Ralph Adams Cram and Frank W. Ferguson were appointed consulting architects in 1911, and they changed the cathedral into pure Gothic.

Surprisingly, Professor Fitch's proposal for modernization found tentative backing from the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, the Rt. Rev. Horace W. B. Donegan (who was born seven years after the cathedral cornerstone was laid). Said Bishop Donegan, "I hope that some way may be found to utilize the modern, as a contribution of and as a way of expressing this generation."

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