According to the old church tradition, most of the cathedrals built in the Gothic style are Catholic. But there is an exception to this rule. The world's largest Gothic cathedral, built in New York City, is not Roman Catholic. He's not Protestant either. It is called Episcopal.
The construction of the cathedral began at the end of 1892 in the Byzantine style. Then, after the bishops of other convictions came to the leadership, they began to rebuild it according to the architectural traditions of the Roman Catholic Church, more precisely, according to the images of French Gothic. The base at the cathedral is in the form of a cross, to the left and to the right of the central entrance, it was planned to erect two towers, very similar to the towers of the famous Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. This resemblance should have been complemented by the pointed arches of the main portal, statues of figures of saints along the walls and a rose window with stained-glass windows above the main portal.
The dimensions of the cathedral are amazing. He's really gigantic. Its total area is two football fields. A rose window made up of a thousand pieces of colored glass, over 12 meters in diameter. At the same time, the cathedral can receive 5 thousand believers.
The colossal size of the cathedral is the result of the ambitions of the representatives of the Episcopal Church of New York. In 1878, the city's Catholics built the St. Patrick's Church in the neo-Gothic style. At the time, this Catholic cathedral was the largest in New York. Representatives of the Episcopal Church decided to overtake their "rivals in the faith" and build an Episcopal Cathedral twice as large.
However, the construction of the cathedral was delayed. Donations were received in an unfriendly manner. By the beginning of the 20th century, only the foundation was ready. The ceremony of consecration of the cathedral, still unfinished, took place in 1941. After the United States entered World War II, all funds of the Episcopal Church went to charity of a different nature. And after the war, construction did not make much progress. The cathedral remained with only one tower.
In 2001, a fire broke out at the construction site of the cathedral. The traces of that devastating fire were removed. Today the cathedral is two-thirds ready. Despite the unfinished construction of one tower, about half a million believers visit the Church of St. John the Theologian every year. To attract them, the Fathers of the Episcopal Church did not stint and put various treasures in the cathedral. For example, tapestries of the 17th-18th centuries depicting the Passion of Christ, paintings by famous artists, various gifts brought from the holy places of the earth.
The cathedral also contains monuments to the victims of Christian history. The biblical garden of the cathedral also attracts believers, in which all the plants mentioned in the Bible are planted.
