WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 July 1931, Page 8

WASHINGTON CATHEDRAL

TO COST £8,000,000. A great church structure, said to be more like a mediaeval cathedral than any ether. church undertaken in modern times, is a point of interest for many thousands of the visitors to Washington. The building is the partly-completed Protestant Episcopal Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, generally known as? Washington Cathedral, located on Mount Saint Alban, a wooded hillside about 400 ft above the city proper and about six miles from the Capitol. Designed to endure for hundreds of years (says the “New York HeraldTribune”), the cathedral is being built as carefully and almost as slowly as the great churches of old. Construction work was begun in 1907, yet at present only about one-fourth of the central edifice has been completed. The cost of the central part is estimated at approximately £2,100,000. Ultimate plans call for an £8,000,000 .religious centre.

Unlike most modern buildings, the cathedral contains no structural steel. It is of solid masonry. The architects point out that while the life of a steel skyscraper is estimated at about fifty years, the cathedral shculd endure for centuries without excessive i epairs. Approximtaely 5C,0U0 tons of stone will be used. The cathedral is designed in the ferm of a cross, the arms of which are known as the north and south transepts. There will be two 196 ft towers ar. the 7 west end and a central tower 292 ft high. The building will be 534 ft long and 135 ft high. Its total area, of 71,000 square feet will exceed that of Westminster Abbey, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the equally famed cathedrals of Amiens, Canterbury, Rheims and Cologne. There are some who credit George Washington with having been the earliest proponent of such a church building the capital. The L’Enfant plan for development of the city, prepared at the direction of the first President, recommended erection of a “church for national purposes.” Definite plans were made for Washington Cathedral in 1891, and two years later the sponsors received a Congressional ,charter. President Roosevelt participated in the ceremony of placing the foundation stone in 1907, and all subsequent Presidents have attended at the cathedral. , The finished parts of the structure include- three beautiful crypt chapels. In one, the Bethlehem chapel, daily services have been held since 1912. It contains the tombs of Woodrow Wilson, Admiral Dewey, and other notable men in United States history.