The cathedral of St. John the Divine, on Morningside Heights, New York, when completed, will be third in area among the cathedrals of the world. Founded by the sixth bishop of New York, Bishop Horatio Potter, who obtained a charter to build it in 1873, the cathedral was originally designed by Heins and Le Farge, with a French Romanesque exterior and a Byzantine interior, the first corner stone being laid on St. John's day, 1892. Even during construction efforts were made at a greater unity of style, and the exterior of the choir was made Gothic; and when, in 1911, Dr. Ralph Adams Cram was appointed consulting architect, he recon sidered the whole design and recommended the adoption of French Gothic for both exterior and interior. In its final form St. John the Divine will be a five-aisled structure, three aisles being included within the clerestorey walls, the triforium and clerestorey being carried, not by the piers of the nave, but over those separating the inner from the outer aisles. The narrow outer aisles take the place of the chain of chapels to be found in most Continental cathedrals. There will be nine bays in the nave, with alternating large and small piers, but the roof vaulting will be in four huge bays, with internal buttressing by means of arches and wing walls pierced by "roses" across the upper part of the inner side aisles. Owing to the narrowness of the outer aisles there will be no need for external flying buttresses. Externally St. John the Divine will have a central spire, or lantern, and twin west towers.
Other recent churches in the United States which deserve men tion are Emmanuel church, Boston, Mass., by Allen and Collens; St. John's, Cambridge, Mass., by Maginnis and Walsh, and St. Bartholomew's, New York, by Goodhue, both Romanesque-Byzan tine ; the Renaissance Presbyterian church, Madison square, New York, by McKim, Mead and White; the Second Reformed Church, New Brunswick, N.J., by Ludlow and Peabody ; and the Taber nacle Presbyterian church, Indianapolis, by J. W. C. Corbusier and R. F. Daggett. Synagogues naturally refer back to their Eastern origin, and the Byzantine Temple Tifereth Israel, Cleve land, 0., by Charles R. Greco ; Temple Ben Israel, Cincinnati, 0., by Tietig and Lee; Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco, Cal., by Bakewell and Brown; and Isaiah temple, Chicago, Ill., by Alfred
S. Abschuler, may be quoted as examples. The characteristic form and style of Christian Science churches in America is well illus trated by First Church of Christ, New York, by Carrere and Hastings, and Third Church of Christ, Park avenue, New York, by Delano and Aldrich. In California there have been some inter esting experiments in concrete churches, without, however, any very determined attempt—as in France and Germany—to give formal expression to the method of construction, but rather a simplified imitation of bygone styles in the new material. Thus, the church of St. John, by Pierpont and Walter Davis, Wilshire Boulevard church, by Allison and Allison, and St. Paul's cathedral, by Johnson, Kauffman and Coate, all in Los Angeles, are Byzan tine, while St. Vincent's church, by Albert C. Martin, in the same city, is in the Baroque of the Spanish mission. (C. MA.) In the United States practically every kind of building has been erected as a memorial, but in such cases the design is gov erned largely by the practical uses for which the buildings are intended. Some purely memorial buildings of architectural inter est have, however, been designed. Two outstanding examples of these are the Lincoln Memorial at Washington, D.C., Henry Bacon, architect, and the Washington Masonic Memorial under construction (193o) at Alexandria, Va., Corbett, Harrison and MacMurray, architects. The Lincoln Memorial, with its square, simple proportions, graceful colonnade and commanding loca tion, is an impressive example of classic dignity in a splendid setting. The Washington Memorial on a hill on the Virginia side of the Potomac river has a simple base with classic portico and pediment ; above that it is a stepped tower taking its inspiration from the ancient ziggurats ; its landscaped grounds make an ap propriate setting. Other examples are the Washington Monu ment, an obelisk of white marble, 555 feet high, designed by Robert Mills, and the Liberty Memorial at Kansas City, Mo., H. Van Buren Magonigle, architect. For the Liberty Memorial, see KANSAS CITY (Mo.) ; for the Lincoln Memorial, see WASH INGTON.
See also ARCHITECTURE; PERIODS OF ART; and the various his toric articles, as well as such shorter ones as TEMPLE, Toms, etc., described in the article ARCHITECTURAL ARTICLES.