http://www.startsandfits.com/divine.html

This site has an article about the cathedral.

Spectacular panorama showing the potential of urban America that was developing at the turn of the 20th century. Now, 100 years later, Google Maps shows the cathedral bordered by a razor-wire-topped chain-link fence. The future did not live up to this photograph.

[The razor-wire fence, a construction barrier put in place after the big fire of 2001, has been removed. - Dave]

What you see in this picture is the east end arch that would eventually support the central dome, and the chapel of St. Saviour, the eastmost part of the structure. The original plan was for a sort-of Romanesque structure, but fashions changed, and in 1911 they hired Ralph Adams Cram, the biggest name in neo-Gothic, to rework the thing into, more or less, the massive Gothic barn it is today. By that point the central dome had been completed, and Cram had several rather different ideas about taking the dome out and replacing it with some sort of central tower along the lines of Washington. They never realized any of them and while they got the nave finished just in time for WW II, after that they pretty much gave up until into the 1970s.

That was the cathedral's nickname when I first read about it in the mid-'80s. I just checked Wikipedia, and the nickname is still appropriate. If the intent was to imitate a medieval Gothic cathedral, the delayed completion does enhance the authenticity.

Is that big arch on the left part of a cathedral being built, or what?

[Could there be a clue in the photo caption? -Dave]

You might be onto something there, Watson!

I found that lovely building at West 111th Street and Manhattan Avenue.

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