Blog

Leslie Clark Lewis, Class of 2009
Photos by the author unless noted

Earlier this year, while waiting for a meeting to start on the 13^th floor at 111, I watched workmen repairing brickwork and installing huge terra cotta panels on the Republic Building. I remember thinking how much work – and money – it takes to keep our landmarked buildings in good shape.

Fast forward a couple of months, and my husband Harry and I were in Cologne, Germany, a stop on our long-awaited Rhine River cruise. Our first tour of the morning included a visit to the Cologne Cathedral, a towering Gothic church, UNESCO World Heritage site, and Germany’s most-visited landmark. Size statistics abound: it is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe; the tallest twin-spired church in the world; the largest church façade in the world. And on and on.

The cathedral had a long construction period. Work began in 1248 and continued intermittently for about 300 years; then it sat unfinished until the 19^th century.

Sometime in the early 1800s, the original plans were discovered, and the Protestant Prussian court, along with the Catholic Church, decided to complete the building as a civic project. Work began in 1842 and was completed in 1880. One can say the cathedral was 632 years in the making.

The cathedral was badly damaged during World War II. It sustained at least 14 hits by Allied bombs. No wonder – it sits right next to the city’s main railroad station and directly in front of an important bridge, two crucial military targets. Amazingly, it remained standing among the ruins of the destroyed city. Restoration efforts began during the first post-war years and were largely completed by the mid-1950s.

Our morning visit included a long stop in the interior, with its glorious stained-glass windows  and treasures including the Shrine of the Three Kings, reportedly holding the bones of the Three Wise Men.

During the afternoon, I took a special “behind the scenes” tour of the cathedral and learned about the continuous preservation work needed on such an old structure. With our guide Matti, 12 of us ascended the outside wall on the same elevator used by the restoration crews. At our first stop, we walked along an exterior walkway amid what seemed like acres of scaffolding. After viewing flying buttresses at practically eye-level, we ducked inside for views of the interior from above. We made our way down a very narrow passage and stopped near the transept organ, where an organist was playing. The organist has to climb up what looked to be very rickety stairs to reach the console. He is unseen by the audience; we could only see the top of his head as it bobbed above the screen meant to shield him from view.

Another outside elevator trip took us eye level with gargoyles and ended at the rooftop level where we entered the cathedral through a small rooftop door. It was amazing to walk right by – and touch – the huge stained-glass windows, see the “swallows nest” organ which sits 65 feet above the floor (the cathedral is so large that two organs are required), and gaze at the nave from the highest point possible.

It was on this level that we saw the inside of the roof, held up by iron girders (19^th century work), and Matti took us into the workrooms. Here the estimated 40 full-time crew members, stonemasons, roofers, scaffold makers, carpenters, plasterers, electricians, and fine artists meet to plan and, in some cases, complete the various restoration projects.

Matti told us that the annual restoration budget is estimated at 10 million Euros. Because the cathedral was completed as a civic project, it is not owned by the Catholic Church. A not-for-profit organization was set up to fund the19th century completion, and still exists to this day to oversee the church: the  Zentral-Dombau-Verein zu Köln(ZDV), or Central Cathedral Building Society. All the workmen – and even Matti—are employed full-time by the ZDV. The restoration costs are shared by this fund, the Catholic Church, and the federal German government. Future costs are estimated to increase markedly because of the disintegration of the oldest stones and climate change.

But wait – we weren’t finished yet. After 100 steps up a skinny spiral staircase, we climbed outside through a small door onto a viewing platform and looked down at the cathedral’s roof. A 360-degree view of Cologne’s rooftops and waters of the Rhine spread before us, punctuated like exclamation points by the enormous cathedral spires.

The Cologne Cathedral may well be the eternal restoration project. It is thrilling to see that preservation work on such an important structure is, at least for now, robustly funded. I wish the same were true for our treasured buildings here in Chicago.

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