Cathedral of St. John the Divine
— — the cathedral that is still being built.
Not only on a wall.
“The Episcopal cathedral on Amsterdam Avenue, started in 1892 and still unfinished. Stonemasons trained on site cut the limestone the old way. Inside, the nave runs longer than two football fields and the light from the rose window crosses the floor slowly through the afternoon. The peacocks live on the close. The vault is held up by trust as much as engineering.
Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, seat of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, stands on Amsterdam Avenue between 110th and 113th Streets in Morningside Heights. The cornerstone was laid on Saint John's Day in 1892. The design shifted from Romanesque-Byzantine under Heins and LaFarge to French Gothic under Ralph Adams Cram. At 601 feet long, it ranks among the largest cathedrals in the world. The towers and transepts remain incomplete, which earned it the local nickname Saint John the Unfinished.
The walls are cut from Indiana limestone and Mohegan granite. Through the 1980s and 1990s a stoneyard on the close trained apprentices from Harlem and the Bronx in medieval carving techniques, work that paused after a 2001 fire damaged the gift shop and the north transept. The west front portals carry sculpted figures by Simon Verity, including a Saint John on the central trumeau. The bronze doors below were cast by Barbedienne in Paris in the 1890s. Carving resumes when funds allow.
Open daily for visitors and for prayer; admission is free though guided tours carry a fee. The Sunday Eucharist at eleven includes a choral setting accompanied by the cathedral's Great Organ, an 8,514-pipe Aeolian-Skinner. The Blessing of the Animals each October draws elephants, camels, and parishioners' dogs down the nave for the Feast of Saint Francis. Two peacocks, Phil and Jim, roam the close. Subway access is the 1 train to 110th Street, two blocks east of the close gates.