Washington National Cathedral announced Tuesday that it will need "tens of millions of dollars" over "numerous years" to repair extensive damage to the USA's second-largest church from an Aug. 23 earthquake.
It requires $25 million "just to get to June 2012, for the first phase of work and to resume worship and programming. We know it will ultimately be much more," says Richard Weinberg, a spokesman for the cathedral.
The cathedral, an Episcopal church that advertises itself as "a spiritual home for all," has been the setting for presidential funerals and other major events, including a Sept. 11 interfaith memorial broadcast nationwide. An estimated 35,000 worshipers and visitors arrive there every month.
The cathedral is exceeded in size in the USA only by St. John the Divine Cathedral in New York City.
Its stone-upon-stone, hand-crafted Gothic architecture took 83 years, from 1907 to 1990, to complete.
In the earthquake, the central tower, the highest elevated point in Washington, sustained damage on three of its four corner spires, and three capstones fell off. There are cracks on some of the upper floors and in some of the flying buttresses, a distinguishing feature of Gothic architecture, in the oldest portion of the building.
Work crews attempted to stabilize the damage — most not covered by insurance — before a schedule of services, concerts and programming, including a visit by President Obama, was to be held on the Sept. 11 memorial weekend last month. But all the events had to be moved to other venues when a crane used to set repair scaffolding fell Sept. 7, damaging the two other buildings in the complex.
Since then, windy, rainy weather has added costs and delays. The cathedral is waiting for the same team of experts that has been rappelling down the Washington Monument, also damaged in the earthquake, to finish there and move a few miles to the hilltop cathedral.
The cathedral had just completed a year of preservation work and was on budget again after rough financial years: Since 2008, the staff has been cut from 170 to 84 and the operating budget slashed from $27 million to $14.8 million, Weinberg says.
John Bryson Chane, interim dean of the cathedral, said Tuesday that just as contributions from across the country built the church, restoration will take "the support of this community and people across the nation."The cathedral will reopen Nov. 12 for the consecration of the newest bishop of the Diocese of Washington, Mariann Edgar Budde.