AN HISTORICAL CATHEDRAL

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 62, 10 September 1904, Page 5

AN HISTORICAL CATHEDRAL

m PARTIAL COLLAPSE OF THE BUILDING. [PKKSS ASSOCIATION.] PARIS, 9th September. A portion of tho interior of the Cathedral at Orleans, in the Department of Loirot, collapsed. -^ Tho Cathedral referred to ill tho above cablegram was originally commenced in 1287, but tho building wns burned by tho Huguenots in 1567 before it* completion. Henry IV., in 1601, laid tho first stone of the new structure, tho building of which is still uncompleted. It wns a Gothic cathedral on a large scale, consisting of a veßtHbulo, a nave with double aisles, a corresponding choir, a transept, and an upse. Its length wns 482 ft, H« greatest width 206 ft, and the height of the central vaults 108 ft. The west front had two fiat-topped towers, each of three stories, of which the first was square, the socond octagonal, and lho third cylindrical. The whole front was Gothic, but was designed and constructed in tho 18th century, and exhibited all the defects of the period. A central spiro 328 ft high, on tho othor hand, raised about thirty years ago, recalled tho pure opivnl style of tho 13th century. In the interior the choir chapels nnd the apse, dating from the original oroction of fho building, were particularly attractive.