As funding comes in from generous donors, the staff has been able to tackle the earthquake restoration work in phases, making slow but impressive progress, including critical masonry repairs and reinforcement to the west towers, flying buttresses and north transept. “We’re lucky it didn’t last a few seconds longer.”Īll told, the cathedral sustained a staggering $34 million in damage. “Boom! It went up through the tops of everything,” Alonso says. “Seventy-five percent of the highest elements rotated,” says James Shepherd, the cathedral’s director of preservation and facilities from 2003 to 2019. The 500-pound, four-foot-tall finials that crown them had crashed to the tower’s roof. Giant stones that make up the four grand pinnacles of the central tower had shifted almost completely off their mortar beds and were perched precariously, looking “like a game of Jenga.” Three of the four pinnacles were missing their tops. Stabilization cables hold unstable giant pinnacle stones in place on the cathedral's south transept.Ĭolin Winterbottom, courtesy of Washington National Cathedralĭecorative carvings lay shattered in pieces on the roof and in the gutters. “It was like a punch to the gut,” says Alonso, describing the shock and disbelief he felt as he surveyed the damage for the first time from the top of the 300-foot central tower. The earthquake’s seismic energy shot up through the cathedral’s highest elements “like the tip of a whip,” shaking its intricately carved pinnacles and slender spires, sending finials and angels plummeting, causing heavy stones to rotate dramatically and flying buttresses to crack. For Alonso and his team, it has been a long and unexpected journey. High up on scaffolding on the southeast side of the Washington National Cathedral, the cathedral’s longtime head stone mason Joe Alonso works six feet apart from the nearest craftsman as they carefully disassemble and remove dangerously loose pinnacle stones dating back to the 1920s with the aid of a giant crane.ĭuring the COVID-19 crisis, construction work has been deemed essential by the mayor of Washington, D.C., and Alonso and his crew of skilled masons and carvers are taking every precaution-practicing, as Alonso puts it, “social distancing stone masonry.” Spreading out across multiple scaffolding decks, with each craftsman wearing a protective mask, they continue their ongoing efforts to safeguard and restore the cathedral, a magnificent 14th-century Gothic-style landmark that was severely damaged when an earthquake rocked the city on August 23, 2011.
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