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Yesterday was a big day for Morningside Heights. Our most famous off-campus building, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, reopened fully Sunday, seven years after the massive 2001 fire that forced its partial closure.
$40 million later, the Cathedral is back in all its splendor. The rededication of drew a crowd of thousands to 112th Street and all the big-name city publications covered the story.
Bwog headed over today to see what all the fuss was about and found a rather placid St. John: the usual few tour buses were parked outside, but inside we found only a few dozen people praying or touring. Still, the Cathedral looks truly glorious, and Bwog suggests heading over ASAP. You can skip the $5 suggested donation and just marvel from the entrance.
Photo by Liz Naiden
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19 Comments
@tourist Worth twice the price…
@St John the Divine looks really cool when you’re on acid.
@holy crap right on…trying that sometime.
I visited this afternoon during lunch. Absolutely, breathtakingly beautiful. Almost moved me to tears. Go now.
@dear bwog, instead of telling us that its pretty and that we should believe you, take a camera with you next time and do what good blogs do.
kthnx
@Yeah but The lack of photos would suggest that the author also decided to “skip the $5 suggested donation and just marvel from the entrance.”
@Alum What does “our most famous off-campus building, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine” actually mean? It doesn’t make any sense to me, and I’m bored enough to explain why.
[If you’re not bored enough to read the explanation, skip the rest of this comment. If you don’t, then don’t complain later about the time you wasted reading it.]
Normally “our off-campus buildings” would suggest buildings Columbia owns but which are not within the campus boundaries — like McBain, Social Work, Casa Hispanica, and the like. The cathedral doesn’t fit into this category because it isn’t “ours”.
If “off-campus” means anything that isn’t on campus, then the statement says the cathedral is the most famous building in the world with the possible exception of those on campus. No building on campus is especially famous, but then the cathedral surely isn’t the most famous building in the world. It’s not even one of the 20 most famous buildings in Manhattan. In fact, it’s not even the most famous building on Morningside Heights.
I think “our most famous off-campus building” is actually Armstrong, the building on the northeast corner of 113th and Broadway, where Tom’s is located. It’s “ours” because Columbia owns it, and it’s “famous” both because it was used in the establishing shots on Seinfeld and, to a lesser extent, because of the Suzanne Vega song “Tom’s Diner”. The number of people who have seen Armstrong on television must be many times the number who are familiar with the cathedral.
That makes the Cathedral, at best, the most famous building near the campus that *isn’t* ours.
Okay, now I’m bored of explaining.
@To be precise... It’s the most famous Cathedral on 110th Street and Amsterdam.
@it's the second largest cathedral in the world
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cathedrals_in_the_world
@yo fool Did your mom drink while she was pregnant or are you simply illiterate? It’s the “largest cathedral (of any denomination) in the world”.
@fool... look at the numbers, not the claims
@there's a festival at st. john’s this sat dec. 6 with some amazing artists http://www.stjohndivine.org/Fair.html
@yessss Now the exorcisms don’t have to happen in ResHalls.
@indeed. I have similar thoughts. Minus the cockroaches. It’s a scary couple of streets from St. Luke down to St. John.
@... i know it’s supposed to be really beautiful and i kinda appreciate all the craftsmanship and all, but…
to be honest, when i look at that building, i get scared. it looks like it’s a hive for an alien race of evil 12 foot long man eating cockroaches that are going to come out in the middle of the night and kill us all.
@what kind of accent does a Southern church have?
A cathe-drawl!
@Where do religious people get their grapes from?
Di-vine!
@How do you come up with puns for almost every post?
@Beatlejuice Ugh, say my name. Thrice.
@Mr. Carter Flyer than beetlejuice, beetlejuice, beetlejuice