Stained Glass Scholar

Researching and documenting the history of America's cathedrals

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Atlanta-based history student, researcher, and writer.

  • Basilica of St. Lawrence – Asheville, N.C.

    The Basilica of St. Lawrence is home to the largest freestanding domed ceiling in American architecture. Another fun fact is that, when standing directly underneath said dome, it’s very easy to believe that today is the day that enormous, heavy, impossible-looking thing is going to fall on you, specifically.

    From the street, oddly, the Basilica looks a little unassuming (no offense!). It’s a dignified, obviously religious building, but between its almost ordinary red brick, and its location on the very fringe of downtown Asheville, I realized I’d driven past it a dozen times in my life and never really noticed it, on my way to the busier city center. Saints Stephen and Aloysius, in the form of statues looming over the entryway, have probably watched a teenage me walk past before, too intent on finding the nearby chocolate shop to look up at them.

    The famed dome isn’t clearly visible from many street approaches, either. The front entrance is suitably tall and imposing, filling a visitor’s view and concealing most of the dome behind it, never hinting that something extraordinary is behind its red brick towers. When I visited, that front entrance was also locked, and I wound up wandering in through a side door that, in hindsight, I’m fairly certain was not meant for visitors. Lightning bolts didn’t strike me down for breaking into a church, though, so I found my way into the sanctuary.

    Here, any thoughts of “unassuming” or “ordinary brick” fell away immediately. The church was designed by a Spanish architect and American immigrant, Rafael Guastavino, whose work with terracotta tile and Spanish-inspired vaulting was groundbreaking in American architecture. The domed ceiling is like nothing I’ve seen in any other American religious building, before or since. Completely unsupported, with no use of wood beams in any of the construction, it spans almost 100 feet over the entire main floor the church. At its peak is a single oculus window. In the dim lighting of a rainy day, the brickwork almost seemed to glow. Where cathedrals are often designed to draw the eye in very specific directions – usually forward and up – the enormous round ceiling of St. Lawrence felt somehow more like we were surrounded by the building’s presence, simultaneously part of it and overwhelmed by it. The stained glass along the walls are capped with half-circle windows, the side chapels are framed in graceful curved arches – there’s an overall sense of defiance of straight lines and Gothic sharpness.

    I was visiting the Basilica on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, the end result of a road trip up from Atlanta. Due to its elevated role as Basilica – consecrated in April 1993, by Pope John Paul II – St. Lawrence is open for some hours almost every day of the year. This makes it a much easier research target than some churches that are only open on Sunday mornings. Between the weekday and the weather, I had the church almost entirely to myself – just me, two or three people praying quietly, and a friendly church volunteer named Mark. Mark sold me a copy of the church’s history booklet – a lot of historical churches have these, if you know to ask! – and gave me me the sort of overview of the art and architecture that passionate churchgoers are often excited to share. It’s these sorts of conversations that are often my favorite part of a trip to any historical site.

    Under the domed ceiling and between curved walls, the pews were still arranged in the two straight lines, marching forward, like the usual rectangular precision of a church was trying to insist that it was still here. I sat briefly to take notes, like I usually do, but the freedom of having a church almost entirely to myself was too exciting to sit still for long. I found myself wandering the side aisles, visiting statues of saints set into wall niches, leafing through my guide to the stained glass, and making my way towards two small chapels at the front of the church. To the right of the altar was a chapel dedicated to Joseph, father of Jesus. Two stained glass window in this chapel were brought in from the original wooden church that St. Lawrence was built to replace. The chapel also features mosaic tilework done by Fathers Peter and Patrick Marion, the church’s priest at the time of construction and his brother. Joseph’s doorway is framed by two statues of saints, including St. Frances Cabrini, the first American-born saint.

    The other chapel, to the left of the alter, is dedicated to Mary. In both these chapels, again, are featured curved archways and domed ceilings (though on a much smaller scale). The Marian chapel features an altar carved with images of female saints, so that it looks as though the statue of Mary on top is literally supported by eight other holy women.

    I stood in front of that altar taking pictures for a few minutes before I realized Mary was looking at – and I was standing right in front of – the Basilica architect’s crypt. Rafael Guastavino himself rests in the walls of the last project he built, in a tomb designed by his son, Rafael Guastavino Jr. The door was propped open, showing a dark, simple chamber, about as long and wide as his casket. It could have felt a little chilling, realizing I had a dead man at my back this whole time. Mostly, it felt right that he was still looking out at his creation, and that for a few minutes, we got to keep each other company.

    It wasn’t long after this that the church needed to close up for the day. I gathered my books and my notes, thanked the volunteer docent for his conversation, and left. Stepping out of the world of the Spanish Renaissance and glowing brickwork and back into a rainy asphalt parking lot was more than a little surreal. Even looking back at the building, I didn’t feel that same sense of reverence as I had ten minutes before. From the outside world, where you can see electrical cables and traffic, fast food wrappers and personal injury lawyer billboards, it’s hard to believe something so artistic and unique exists in the same space. I lingered for a few minutes, taking photos of the exteriors and the gardens, just to have an excuse to delay getting back in the car. Subconsciously, I wasn’t really ready to leave the peace and quiet and awe behind. But the magic just isn’t the same from the concrete sidewalks, and afternoon commuter traffic doesn’t wait on religious experiences. My SUV and I were back on the highway before long, heading south towards Atlanta through the gathering evening. And if you’ve never driven through the mountains of North Georgia by starlight – trust me, that’s a religious experience you need to have in your lifetime, too.

    Sources:

  • How This All Started

    Have you ever run across something so interesting, you wanted to write a school paper about it, and then you couldn’t find any sources for that thing, and after a two-month extension and a half dozen emails with your professor about it, took it very personally, got carried away and decided you were going to write the source you needed yourself?

    Because I have, and now I’m gathering research to publish a book containing as many histories of American cathedrals as I can find and verify (and I got a B on that paper in the end, by the way).

    As part of a religious history class, I wanted to write a paper inspired by a visit to a local cathedral – St. Phillip’s (Episcopal) in Atlanta. It never even crossed my mind that it would be a difficult topic to write about – after all, they’re great big honking buildings, in the middle of most major metropolitan areas, seen by thousands of people every day, surely someone has written something about them. And then, almost immediately, I started running into literary walls. I couldn’t find a single book about the history of the American cathedrals specifically. My professor gave me some of the usual advice – get a reference librarian to help you, try one of the other universities in our system – but we continued to turn up nothing. I don’t even remember what my paper’s original thesis was anymore, because I had to give up on two or three attempts for lack of resources.

    Eventually, I turned in some semblance of an overview of American cathedral-building, cobbled together from better-documented bits and pieces – histories of anti- Catholic legislation, Industrial Revolution-era mining and shipping, Gothic Revival architecture, and Greek immigration all painted a rough outline, and by then, it became clear that this had spiraled way out of the usual scope of a paper for a 300-level class.

    But I’m stubborn, and curious, and that’s a combination that always ends well, right?

    I’m a person who grew up surrounded by books. I have always been comforted and excited by the fact that anything I ever wanted to learn someday, I could find a book about it. I might not be able to read them all in my lifetime (and man, did that cause some crying existential crises when I was a kid) but knowing the books were out there, somewhere, quietly waiting for me whenever I needed them, has always been a comforting thought. Running into my first-ever situation where there isn’t a book when I need it is something I’ve taken a little personally.

    So, this project is my attempt to fill that gap. The historical knowledge is out there, in the form of tourism guides and historical booklets lovingly curated and maintained by church members and staff. Unfortunately, they’re usually self-published and/or distributed very locally, making them a resource that’s not widely accessible. Sometimes, they’ve never even been written down – some of these histories only exist in one person’s living memory.

    My goal is to contact and/or visit as many of the American cathedrals as possible, document everything I can find, research what I can’t, conduct interviews, and compile it all into something more broadly accessible and easily referenced. I approach this project with an intention to share and amplify knowledge, not to claim credit for it. My hope is just to help find, share, and preserve historical knowledge. My fascination, and therefore my project’s focus, is more on the historic than on the religious aspects – it’s not my place or my intention to weigh in on anyone’s faith or practice in any of my writing. These beautiful, fascinating buildings, and the communities they are a part of, deserve to have their stories told, and all history deserves to be preserved and recorded. If my writing can help serve that purpose, then I’ll be content with my work.