Bryn Athyn Cathedral
National Historic Landmark · Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania
A Gothic and Romanesque cathedral built between 1913 and 1928 north of Philadelphia for the General Church of the New Jerusalem, the Swedenborgian denomination, and paid for by the Pitcairn family out of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass fortune. What makes it extraordinary is not the style but the method: Raymond Pitcairn abandoned working drawings, set up craft workshops on the site, and had the whole building made by hand the way a medieval one would have been — stone cut on site, glass blown and coloured on site, metal forged on site, and the design changed as it went. Nothing is symmetrical, no two windows match, and the walls are deliberately out of plumb.
900 Cathedral Road, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, 19009, United States
Open to visitors most days during daytime hours, free, with guided tours at posted times. Closed to visitors during services, weddings and funerals, sometimes at short notice. Sunday morning worship is open to all. Glencairn Museum next door keeps separate hours and charges separately.
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