Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York

On Morningside Heights, between the Upper West Side and Harlem, the Episcopal Diocese of New York has been building a cathedral since 1892, and has not finished yet. St John the Divine is more than 600 feet long, and the cathedral calls itself the largest in the world. Only half of one transept was ever built, its towers end in mid-air, and its crossing is still roofed by a dome that was meant to be temporary. Inside it is vast, dim and extraordinary.

A cathedral in two styles

The first design, by Heins and LaFarge, was Romanesque and Byzantine. The cornerstone was laid on St John’s Day, 27 December 1892, and the great granite columns of the choir went up in 1903. In 1909 Rafael Guastavino built the tiled dome over the crossing as a stopgap; it is still there. Then the architect Ralph Adams Cram turned the design to French Gothic, and the enormous nave was built to his plans. The full length of the cathedral was consecrated on 30 November 1941, a week before Pearl Harbor, and work stopped.

Building began again in 1979, when young people from the neighbourhood were trained as stonecutters in the cathedral’s own stoneyard, but the money ran out in the early 1990s with the south tower of the west front about two-thirds of its planned height. In December 2001 a fire destroyed the gift shop in the unfinished north transept and left the interior black with smoke; the cathedral was cleaned and fully reopened in November 2008. A few arches across the nave were left uncleaned and keep their darker, pre-fire colour.

The visitor’s cheat sheet

What to see

The west front and the Portal of Paradise

Look closely at the central doorway on Amsterdam Avenue. Its biblical figures were carved between 1988 and 1997 under the English sculptor Simon Verity, and under the figures on the south side, the carved bases show Manhattan’s skyline toppling in an apocalypse, the twin towers among them, years before 2001. The bronze doors themselves, each 18 feet high, were cast in Paris.

The nave

The nave is immense, and its windows are each devoted to a field of human life: medicine, sport, labour, the arts and more. In the Arts Bay on the north side is the American Poets Corner, inaugurated in 1984, where the first writers honoured were Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Washington Irving.

The Great Rose Window

Turn round to face the west doors. High above them is the Great Rose Window, 40 feet across and made of more than 10,000 pieces of glass, with Christ at its centre. The cathedral calls it the third-largest rose window in the world.

The crossing, choir and chapels

Under the Guastavino dome, the crossing is where the Sunday services are held; the cathedral says the Statue of Liberty could stand inside it. Beyond, steps rise to the Great Choir and the high altar, ringed by granite columns and flanked by two tall menorahs given in 1930. Around the apse are the seven Chapels of the Tongues, each in a different national style and named for saints of different national origins, a nod to the immigration of the time. One of them, the Chapel of St Saviour, holds Keith Haring’s bronze altarpiece, The Life of Christ, one of his last works, finished weeks before he died in 1990.

The Vertical Tour

The best way to understand the building is from inside its walls. The Vertical Tour climbs more than 124 feet by narrow spiral stairs, along high passages with stained glass at eye level, and comes out on the roof with views across Manhattan. It is for ages 12 and over.

Getting there

The cathedral is at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112th Street. Take the 1 train to Cathedral Parkway–110th Street on Broadway, about five minutes’ walk, or the C (or the B, weekdays only) to 110th Street at Central Park West, about ten minutes’ walk uphill. Buses M4 and M104 stop on Broadway at 112th Street, and the M11 on Amsterdam Avenue. There is no parking at the cathedral.

Don’t miss

• The toppling skyline At the foot of the central portal, south side.
• The Great Rose Window Turn round at the crossing.
• Poets Corner Arts Bay, north side of the nave.
• The Guastavino dome The “temporary” one, from 1909.
• The Vertical Tour Up to the roof.

Insider tips

More churches in the United States

• Trinity Church, Wall Street — Alexander Hamilton’s churchyard.
• Washington National Cathedral — Gothic high above the capital.

See all the American churches in this guide →