We got there a little early, so we took ourselves on a tour of Columbia. Because it was a beautiful day, it was a lovely walk through the grounds. We also managed to see St. Paul's chapel on the campus, which has a nice La Farge stained glass window over the altar.
On to St. John the Divine. The church had a fire either shortly before or shortly after 9/11 and has been worked on since then. It is finally finished, and it's a glorious finish. One of the great stories about the fire is that when the organist saw the fire on TV, he rushed to the fire station because he was the one person who knew all the nooks and crannies and secret passageways of the church, and knew that there were special tiles in the roof that were fireproof, and ways to get into the insides of things, which meant the fire could be fought from inside the church and would not necessitate breaking any of the windows. See, musicians can be useful as well as ornamental.
When the church was built it was intended to be in the Romanesque style, with a dome and very thick walls. The architect died partly into the project and the new architect made some serious changes, making it more of a Gothic structure. So the apse (the part over the altar, anyway) is in the earlier style, and the rest is Gothic. It's truly a beautiful building. The first time Billie and I were here in 2002, everything was partitioned off, there were little alleys you could walk through, and you couldn't see much of the church. Now you can see the whole thing and it is glorious.
All the windows have been cleaned and since today was a bright day, they sparkle. The back rose window is enormous, 40 feet in diameter. The tiny figure of Christ in the center (from our perspective) is life size, or 5'9".
There is a second rose window beneath the giant one, apparently because two rose windows are better than one.
The entire church is a quarter of a mile long, or expressed in football fields, two football fields plus one football. According to our guide, who was very good, and we were a tour group of 3, so we had his undivided attention, there's a lot of numerology incorporated into the creation of this church, so if you're not measuring it in terms of footballs, the length in feet comes out to some number that can be added up crossways to get seven. Or to put it another way, you could lay the Washington Monument down inside. You could also stand the Statue of Liberty in there if she'd just put her arm down. There are seven chapels around the apse, to welcome all nations -- though I guess as you would expect for the time the church was built, all nations were England, Ireland, Norway, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy. Here's a picture of the outside. Check out near the white spot on the roof, and you can see the workmen up there. (And I don't even like to get up on our roof to clean the gutters.)
I'm really glad we we went, and I'm really glad we took the tour.
Following that, we hopped on the bus (love the NY transportation system, have I mentioned that?) and went to the Museum of Folk Art where they are showing an exhibit of Paula Nadelstern's kaliedoscopic quilts. Jan in Pahrump had alerted me to this exhibit. I'd looked at the pictures on the internet, but they don't begin to do it justice. Here's a link to the website of the museum, and there is a slideshow there of the quilts, but you can't get the full impact. You should try to come see them in person, is all I can say.
I tried to be a bad girl and take some pictures, but they busted me right away, and were carefully watching me to see that I didn't pull out the camera again. Harumph. We do have one picture from the lobby, though, since either they didn't spot us there, or didn't care. Gives you an idea of the size of the smaller ones.
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