by Fr. Neil Xavier O’Donoghue
On September 11th, along with the more famous buildings, a small Greek Orthodox church was destroyed in the terrorist attack. While the Deuteche Bank Building and Fiterman Hall had to be demolished later, St. Nicholas was the only building that was not part of the World Trade Center Complex to be destroyed in the attack.
The church had originally been a townhouse built around 1832. It was converted into a Greek Orthodox church in 1922 by a group of Greek immigrants. Here it is in 2000 before the terrorist attacks:
By 2001 the church was the only old building in the area and was dwarfed by the World Trade Center. The buildings around it had been demolished and it was surrounded on three sides by a car park. But it maintained an active congregation of about 70 families. Nobody was in the church during the September 11th attacks, but the church was totally destroyed. Its prized possession of relics of St. Nicholas, St. Catherine, and St. Save were lost (the relics of the saints were mingled with so many of those who dies in the Twin Towers and whose remains were never recovered).
After the attacks the parish decided to rebuild a new church. This new church will be the only non-secular building at Ground Zero.
As the whole area was being rebuilt, the negotiations between the parish and the Port Authority took 13 years. According to the agreement between the parish and the Port Authority, the new church was to be located at the eastern end of Liberty Park, above the Vehicle Security Center of the WTC. This means that it is impossible to modify the space below the church. In fact, the whole structure must be built on a 4 foot thick concrete ‘mat’ provided by the Port Authority.
This means that the church will be built about 25 feet above street level and will form an integral part of the new World Trade Center. While the original parish wasn’t extremely significant in the big picture of Christianity in the United States, the new parish church will serve as a national shrine as well as a parish church and is destined to become one of the most visited churches in the nation.
Archbishop Demetrios of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America suggested that “the design for church must respect the traditions and liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church, but at the same time must reflect the fact that we are living in the 21st century.” Using this as a guiding principle, the parish organized a competition to find an architect to design the new church.
This was won by Santiago Calatrava. Calatrava is a famous Spanish architect who is famous mainly for building bridges and railway stations. I don’t know if he is a practicing Catholic, but in December 2011 Pope Benedict XVI appointed him as a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
To my knowledge this is the first church designed by Calatrava that is actually due to be built. He has not had much luck with his earlier church designs.
Calatrava had been commissioned to complete the (Episcopalian) Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York in the 1980’s. He produced a design that seems to owe its inspiration to Antoni Gaudí, but it was decided not to finish that church for the foreseeable future.
Calatrava also won the competition to build the new Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, CA. The Catholic Right was not too happy with Calatrava’s design, and in particular his declaration that
my ambition is to give Oakland’s cathedral a universal character independent of the Catholic Church.
His proposed cathedral was fashioned as a huge glass shell atop of an elliptical plan, “like hands joined in prayer” and following the spirit of Chinese, Buddhist or Hindu societies who often use orthogonal centers for their temples. But in the end his plan for Oakland was rejected – more for concerns of possible cost-overruns than any design issues. His design was dropped in favor of Craig Hartmann, a local architect who was a runner-up in the design competition.
St. Nicholas at Ground Zero is very different from anything that Calatrava has designed before, including his proposals for Oakland and St. John the Divine. It doesn’t have the massive proportions and arches that he is famous for. This is a much more intimate project. In a very symbolic way he took his inspiration from the mosaics of the famous Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. In an interview he gave the BBC, Calatrava shows how he moves from the mosaic image of Justinian presenting a model of Hagia Sophia combined with the mosaic of the Virgin and Child and blends the shapes of the two into his basic design for the new St. Nicholas church. The dome is inspired by the famous Byzantine Church of the Savior in Chora in Constantinople.
White Vermont marble was selected as the main stone for the building – the parishioners thought it important to use stone from America as they are an American parish. However, the main feature of the church is the cupola that goes all the way down to floor level and is made of marble laminated in glass. During the day this will allow light to filter into the church. But at night, when you look at the church from the outside it will seem to glow. (The church plans to be open 24 hours a day.) Thus it becomes like a votive lamp bearing to God the prayers of those who visit Ground Zero.
The details of the church interior are not as clear as the details of the church itself. But nevertheless we can get a good idea of the big picture, in particular of how the church interacts with the official 9/11 memorial and the rest of the WTC site.
Calatrava said that his guiding principle was that the church was not going to be important due to its size – in fact it will be a small church like the original St. Nicholas. What makes it significant is its location on the hallowed ground of Ground Zero.
Readers of Pray Tell might be interested in reflecting on how this work of modern Orthodoxy compared to the proposed Russian Orthodox cathedral complex in Paris. Pray Tell already reported on the original design of that Cathedral. (Though now it seems that a new design has been selected).
Another area to reflect on is that, thanks to a quirk of fate (or Providence), probably the most important civic memorial in the United States will have a Christian chapel as part of the complex. How does this bear on the role of religion in the public square?
Fr. Neil Xavier O’Donoghue is a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark, NJ. He currently serves as Vice Rector of Redemptoris Mater House of Formation in Dundalk, Co. Louth, Ireland and as a curate in Holy Redeemer parish.
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