Took the "vertical tour" yesterday with vodka-breath - that's the tour of the
upper reaches of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, at 112th and Amsterdam
in NYC.  (Big unfinished neo-Gothic thing, for anyone who has never been
south of the Yellownknife or east of the Ohio.)

The spiel was looooong-winded but not outrageously inaccurate [Tour Guide:
"Heins and Lafarge were the leading medievalists of their day."] and we
finally got up the 120+ feet to the triforium to contemplate the vertiginous
view straight down past Ralph Cram's icy Gothic column-trunks.  Truly,
brothers and sisters, it would be a holy suicide.

We also went out on the roof to contemplate Gothickus Interruptus, the 1982
project by Cathedral Dean James Parks Morton to complete [sic] the two towers
on the west front, left as stumps after Japanese dive bombers hit targets
farther west in 1941.  That was the retro-carvo idea which developed into
Cathedral Stoneworks, which has been discussed on this list several times.
[Tour Guide: "The Stoneworks was very influential - the figures on the Warner
Brothers store were carved by veterans of Cathedral Stoneworks, and two
others have set up a business which sells rocks with inspirational messages
on them."  Nice epitaph, people!]

Tour Guide said that the Cathedral was trying to raise money to remove the
rusting pipe scaffolding, because it has given up on finishing even the south
tower, which was raised about 30? feet of its projected 90? foot height.

Tour Guide (and Helper) also let us into the cavity between the Guastavino
dome (which was "famously temporary, but has lasted 90 years" - she loved
that word, "famously", and used it often). From the top, the Guastavino
ceiling is all round and rumbly, and is protected by a peaked roof above,
supported in place by steel trusses
[Tour Guide:  "Of course, when I said the Cathedral had no steel in it, I
wasn't including the roof!!"]

The space is perhaps 300 feet long, end to end, perhaps 80 feet across. It's
not dark - there are little trefoil windows. There is a steel deck platform
ringing the edge, and also, every 50 feet, catwalks running from one side to
the other.  Many catwalks have some serious winch equipment on them, which
Tour Guide could not ID.  But every other one (the ones which happen to lie
directly above the principal stone cross-vaults) is loaded with cinder
blocks.  Tour Guide said that these had been so loaded to push down on the
cross-vaulting, to push out on the flying buttresses.  The buttresses had
been designed for a much heavier roof, she said, and indeed there is
noticeable vertical cracking of the interior stone elements which transfer
the horizontal pressure from the buttresses.

Someone skilled in avoiding disaster had given the matter some thought,
because the catwalks original hangers (3" angles bolted to the roof trusswork
above) had been sliced so that the roof would not deflect under the
additional load. [Tour Guide: "There's nothing to worry about - it's
perfectly safe."]

Anyone on this listserv, Episcopalian or otherwise, familiar with this
problem?  If so, why not just cheat on the roof truss, and let the whole roof
rest on the cross-vaulting?  It was probably a hot, hot day when some poor
sucker (could it have been - Reverend Rhodes?) had to hump those 600
cinderblocks up 1200 narrow steps.

Sign me,  Christopher, in Greek, means "news carrier"