When wandering through the streets of Manhattan, there are hardly ever any surprises concerning heights and sizes. One never gets used to the overwhelming microcosmos that comprises this part of New York City. Awe and wonder, gape and stumble, those are the verbs and seem to be the alternating conditions when roaming the man made canyons. So when one approaches the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue in Morningside Heights, it doesn´t appear to be anything special. Everywhere else in the world this humongous house of prayer would outsize anything else nearby. With an interior length of 183 meters and a height of almost 71 meters it is the largest anglican and the fourth largest christian church in the world. Construction of the church began in 1892 and is far from finished. There were a few major interruptions in construction due to both world wars, lack of funding, and finally, a great fire that broke out in 2001. Rededication started in 2008, after the organ pipes and parts of the church were cleaned and repaired from smoke damage. St. John the Divine is not John the Baptist, but the author of the last book of the new testament, the book of Revelation. Who was this John? Some scholars think it was John the Apostle, while recent research leads other scholars to believe it was John of Patmos, a prophet from palestine, who lived in banishment on the island of Patmos close to Ephesos. Well, be that as it may, the Cathedral is definetely of the Episcopal Diocese of New York. Originally planned in the Byzantine-Romanesque-Revival style, the design was changed after almost twenty years of construction, to the Gothic-Revival style.

The Cathedral is far from finished; here the uncompleted south tower can be seen

The inside of one of the two mighty bronze doors

The nave is almost an astonishing 38 meters in height

The Cathedrals own 9/11 Memorial

These massive 15 meter columns weigh 130 tons each,

and are said to be the largest in the world.

The Cathedral is permanently open for art projects of all kind. Even very provocative ones

like that of avant-garde singer Diamanda Galas, who covered her body in cattle blood

to protest the ignorance and condemnation towards people with AIDS.

More pics of the Cathedral and Manhattan