New Cathedral in North Dakota Captures Spirit of the Prairie
Episcopal News Service. July 28, 1993 [93139]
North Dakota's new cathedral rises like a shimmering grain elevator among the new houses in a suburb of Fargo, capturing the angles and light like a piece of modern sculpture.
Gethsemane Cathedral also rises from the ashes -- literally. The venerable old wooden cathedral downtown burned almost four years ago, plunging the 700-member congregation into an intense period of self-examination about its role in the community.
"The first tendency in that kind of situation is to want to recreate, to put things back the way they were," said Dean Frank Clark in his spacious office in the new cathedral. Clark said the feeling is part of denial, pretending that the fire didn't really happen.
The first priority was to hold the community together, "so we rented space to meet our needs -- a font to baptize, a table for the Eucharist and a place for the preached word. Then we began to ask the tough questions about who we are and what kind of building we needed," Clark said.
It didn't take long, Clark added, to discover that it wasn't possible to replicate the 1889 cathedral. Soon it was equally obvious that the downtown site would not be large enough for a modern building and parking facilities. A consensus emerged in favor of a new church on another site.
"While the building committee began the task of looking for architects, the cathedral chapter moved to help the congregation define who we are as a community of faith," Clark said. "We knew we had to start from the ground up."
Soon the name of architect Charles Moore from Austin, Texas, "rose to the top of everyone's list. He had dealt with a similar situation in California and we were impressed not only with his design ability but also his ability to work with groups of people along the way," according to Clark.
The Roman Catholics were happy to sell Gethsemane nine and one-half acres they had owned for 20 years in hopes of building a a new church.
Members of the parish met in four workshops on Sunday afternoons and wrestled with the issues of a new site and a new design. Moore tested their architectural tastes during the workshops by showing them slides of a wide range of elements used by builders throughout history. "That gave him some ideas to work with and he would keep reporting back to us what he was hearing, helping him to refine the details," Clark said. "People got very involved, and very excited."
Once he had the general concepts in mind, Moore and his partner Arthur Andersson began the design. "Then Moore came back to us a final time with a scheme that was very close to the building as it would be built," Clark said. A model was more valuable than blueprints in helping people actually visualize the building and react. "The design was adopted by consensus, we didn't even vote."
The bell tower took some extra discussion, Clark added, and in the end moved away from a rather traditional spire to the shape of a grain elevator, giving the whole building what Moore called the look of "prairie Gothic."
The prairie Gothic look of Gethsemane is due as much to materials as it is design. By the time the insurance claim was settled and the costs of temporary space were included, the parish took a close look at budget constraints and instructed the architects to use simple materials. "So Moore took very basic building materials, wood and concrete, with a board and batten exterior," Clark said while standing in the spacious, light-filled interior of the sanctuary.
There is also a playful quality to the building, especially the interior, because Moore and Andersson were "masters of surprise," Clark said with a smile. While not a large building, as cathedrals go, it is filled with intriguing angles, skylights, colored beams and an altar that picks up the design of the bell tower. By dealing with the history and generations of memories the new cathedral avoided the potential for division. Incorporating elements from the former cathedral "honored the memories of everyone involved in the process so that they felt an ownership in the final design," Clark said.
"It's a wonderful building because it works, it functions the way we hoped it would," Clark continued. "In this case form and function work together."
The space is so flexible that the chapel space can be opened up and added to the main sanctuary to create enough space for concerts and diocesan meetings. The offices, including a wing for the bishop and his staff, are built around courtyards which can be used for informal gatherings or receptions.
Although a successful fundraising campaign, added to the insurance settlement, paid for the $2.5 million building, it will take time to add some additional stained glass windows and a pipe organ. In the meantime the people of Gethsemane will adjust to not only a new building, but also to new possibilities in a new neighborhood. And they will, as Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning said when he dedicated the unfinished cathedral last May, serve as a symbol of hope for generations of the faithful.
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