Quiet Rooms, Loud City
Churches & Cathedrals
St Patrick's on Fifth Avenue, the unfinished cathedral on Amsterdam, and the colonial churchyards that predate the country.
3 placesFifth Avenue at 50th
St Patrick's Cathedral
A French Gothic cathedral dropped into the middle of Midtown, built when this was farmland and everyone said the location was absurd. Free to walk into.
Broadway at Wall Street
Trinity Church
The tallest building in New York until 1890, now dwarfed at the end of Wall Street, with Alexander Hamilton in the churchyard and a parish charter from 1697.
Morningside Heights
Cathedral of St John the Divine
The largest cathedral in the world by floor area, begun in 1892 and still unfinished. One tower is missing, the transepts are stumps, and it is extraordinary.