On one of the year's first warmer days, a slightly overcast, breezy afternoon on a particularly uneventful Saturday in March, I made the decision to stray a little further than usual, away from the growing masses on the National Mall, and the accumulation of tourists surrounding the city's monuments.
Nestled rather conspicuously, a few blocks away from the clustered American University campus, sits the National Cathedral and Basilica, a towering Episcopal church that looks far older than it actually is. Its construction began in 1907, but wasn't completed as we see it now until 1990.
Modeled after the enormous Gothic chapels of 12th century Europe, the National Cathedral does its predecessors justice; the inside and outside of the structure are adorned with precise stonework and tracery, while the massive vaulted ceilings and stained glass rose windows inspire the effect of an anachronistic juxtoposition, as if somehow a thousand year-old English chapel could simply be picked up, carried through time, and planted on the streets of a modern cityscape.
Perhaps most impressive were the series of ornate stone alters (pictured at left), at the front of the chapel. The unique aspect about the architecture in the church is that since the style of the building is an homage to an era of the past, there is a broad range of art on the interior, a compilation of the era's masterpieces; including narrative tapestries, carvings decorated in gold leaf, statues of clergymen and noted historical figures, and grotesques.
The outside of the structure is as impressive as the inside. As you move away from the building itself, there is an opportunity to walk the expansive campus surrounding the cathedral, where there is a large garden, separating the main building with a complex of parochial schools.
Beyond that, you exit into the Cathedral Heights neighborhood, which was particularly intriguing to me. Living in Washington carries an expectation of the hurried urban nature of the majority of the space inside the Beltway, whereas these neighborhoods are areas more like the suburban sprawl in the midst of which I grew up in Ohio. It was certainly interesting to find that there were more than just tightly packed city neighborhoods, and a bit more familiarity to my own origins than I had originally thought.
The cathedral cost 6$ for students with valid ID and 10$ for other adults, but I found it to be well worth the cost of admission.
- Drew Lindenberger
Nestled rather conspicuously, a few blocks away from the clustered American University campus, sits the National Cathedral and Basilica, a towering Episcopal church that looks far older than it actually is. Its construction began in 1907, but wasn't completed as we see it now until 1990.
Modeled after the enormous Gothic chapels of 12th century Europe, the National Cathedral does its predecessors justice; the inside and outside of the structure are adorned with precise stonework and tracery, while the massive vaulted ceilings and stained glass rose windows inspire the effect of an anachronistic juxtoposition, as if somehow a thousand year-old English chapel could simply be picked up, carried through time, and planted on the streets of a modern cityscape.
The outside of the structure is as impressive as the inside. As you move away from the building itself, there is an opportunity to walk the expansive campus surrounding the cathedral, where there is a large garden, separating the main building with a complex of parochial schools.
Beyond that, you exit into the Cathedral Heights neighborhood, which was particularly intriguing to me. Living in Washington carries an expectation of the hurried urban nature of the majority of the space inside the Beltway, whereas these neighborhoods are areas more like the suburban sprawl in the midst of which I grew up in Ohio. It was certainly interesting to find that there were more than just tightly packed city neighborhoods, and a bit more familiarity to my own origins than I had originally thought.
The cathedral cost 6$ for students with valid ID and 10$ for other adults, but I found it to be well worth the cost of admission.
- Drew Lindenberger
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