(orchestral music) - Across time, across civilization, from Asia to the Americas, the best architecture over and over and over again is architecture devoted to something spiritual, call it religion, call on it whatever you want to call it, but it's something bigger than the self, bigger than a person, bigger than even a particular culture.

- Architecture really arose out of creating places for the spirit.

You think of the oldest structures on Earth, and there are sacred places, this sort of spiritual dimension, and it's something that everybody longs for in one way or the other.

And I think people find solace, they find connection, and they find direction by being in sacred space.

(orchestral music continues) - Ours is a nation of immigrants.

We're a tapestry of endless use of diverse peoples from all over the planet who have come here often fleeing the floods of prejudice and persecution.

Every seventh person in America was born in another country, and just about every country in the world is represented in our population.

Immigrants coming to the United States bring with them their religion, their languages, their traditions, their cultures, and their sacred architecture where a Noah's arc of religious freedom and vernaculars.

(gentle music) Welcome back to our second film in the series, "A Sacred Piece of Home: Washington D.C." I'm your host, Ori Z. Soltes.

As we observed in the last film, architectural fashions had evolved after the initial love of Greek revival, or Greco-Roman style, or neoclassical style.

- People started pointing out that the Greeks were pagans, and we are not a pagan nation.

We are a Christian nation.

And what is Christian architecture?

Gothic.

- Of course, the most stunning example of the true Gothic style in our nation's capital is the National Cathedral on Massachusetts Avenue.

It's one of the half dozen largest Gothic style edifices on the planet.

This amazing edifice seems to have traveled all the way from medieval times to our capital.

(orchestral music) Like many of other ecclesiastical architecture in the D.C. area, the cathedral attests to the English aspects of the roots of the city.

It was designed by Henry Vaughan, an immigrant from England, under the tutelage of George Bodley, an English architect, who is responsible for popularizing English Gothic, and known as a leading exponent of ecclesiastical architecture throughout England.

The edifice was imagined as the Westminster Abbey of America.

The Washington National Cathedral was made according to the prescriptions of true Gothic in both style and its substance.

Gothic churches were first made in 12th century France, and became very popular all over Europe for centuries.

In earlier churches, arches had to be supported by heavy walls, and so the walls had very few windows and very small windows.

A Gothic structure offers an immensely vertical skeletal system, which frees up wall space by transferring the load, the weight of the roof and the vaults, to flying buttresses that are at right angles to the walls.

A multitude of tall pointed arch windows, the arches are called ogives, an influence from Islamic pointed arches, fill the enormous space with light.

Fanciful animals or gargoyles or disguised rain spouts.

And at the Washington Cathedral, some of them were modeled after donors, to their great delight.

Gothic churches were filled with images depicting biblical characters and stories rendered in sculpture and stained glass, thus linking the human and divine worlds.

They're a powerful evocation of divine power, an embodiment of the celestial city or heavenly Jerusalem.

In the case of Washington, this was particularly appropriate since the founding fathers, as we earlier noted, conceived of the new capital, both as a new Roman Republic and as a new Jerusalem.

George Washington and Pierre L'Enfant had imagined, and I'm quoting, "A great church for national purposes."

L'Enfant's 1791 plan for Washington, D.C. called for such a structure to provide a site for public prayer, Thanksgiving celebrations, funeral commemorations, and other significant events that would involve the city and the country.

A century later in 1893, Congress granted a charter, allowing the Episcopal Cathedral Foundation to establish a house of worship in the District of Columbia.

Three years later, the most commanding spot in the area overlooking much of the city was chosen as a site.

In 1907, the foundation stone that came from a field in the Holy Land was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt before a crowd of 10,000.

The National Cathedral took 83 years to be completed.

Not that long in terms of Gothic structures, I might add.

But luckily for us, it was constructed during the age of photography and film.

Artisans were drawn from Europe, particularly from Italy, who could deal with the stone carving and the stone structure that this enormous edifice required.

(orchestral music) It was not done until 1994.

It was designed to be assigned to no particular sect or denomination, but equally open to all, a kind of pan-religious structure.

After all, this is the country in which church and state, from the beginning were said to be separate, and yet we have a National Cathedral that is Episcopal.

Rather a kind of paradox.

(gentle music) A few blocks from the cathedral is the Sikh Gurdwara, constructed in 2006.

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion founded in 15th century India by Guru Nanak, a Hindu, born in 1469, who lived in a part of Punjab, now in Pakistan.

Due to their beards and turbans, Sikh men have often been victims of discrimination because they're sometimes mistaken for Muslims.

After 9/11, some were even murdered because of the rampant Islamophobia after that catastrophe.

Sikhism is the fifth largest religion in the world, about 25 million people.

Sikhs began migrating to California in the late 19th century, and there are about half a million Sikhs in America today, with perhaps 30,000 or more in the D.C. metro area.

There are in fact about 10 Gurdwaras in the DMV.

Sikhs revere their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, and the teachings of the gurus, hence the name Gurdwara, door of the gurus, or teachers.

Inside the Gurdwara, the Sikh holy book, Guru Granth Sahib, is kept on elevated place of honor, covered with a brocade and with a brocade canopy in the distinctive yellow-orange, which is the holy color for Hindu's, Buddhists, and Sikhs alike.

Sikh symbols, the Ik Onkar, which means one creator, and the Khanda, meaning eternal creator, are evident on the walls and on the platform where the holy book is placed.

The book is treated like a monarch and is fanned with fly whisks during services.

The golden temple in Amritsar is known as Darbar Sahib, darbar, meaning court, as in royal court.

Sikhism or Sikhi values social equality, service to humanity, and devotion to one God.

Gurdwaras are renowned for the langar, or community meal, which is prepared by volunteers and fed free to all visitors of all denominations.

The small domes we see outside the National Gurdwara will eventually be painted gold and placed on the roof, surrounding a large golden dome that is being made in India, a sacred piece of home being prepared in the original Sikh homeland to crown the Gurdwara in their new home.

(gentle music) Another national institution is the spectacular Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, known as the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, one of the most important of the Catholic structures in the Brooklyn area in Northeast Washington.

In 1846, the bishops had declared the immaculately conceived Virgin Mary to be the patroness of the United States.

As one newspaper, the "Lowell Courier-Journal," reported, they proposed that, and I'm quoting, "A magnificent Catholic church be built in Washington, D.C. after the manner of the great cathedrals of the old world, from subscriptions from every Catholic parish in America."

- The rector of Catholic University lobbied the church to build a big shrine on the premises of the Catholic University, and that was built from 1920.

So, that became an anchor for a community, especially of Catholics in that area, almost 100 years before the interior was finished.

- [Ori] It was first to be in Gothic style, but plans were changed to Romanesque Byzantine style, partly to offer a distinction from the National Cathedral, which was already being built in Gothic style, as we have seen.

Yet, like the cathedral, it offers a deliberate connection in its very materials to Europe and the past.

It is built like medieval churches, with thick masonry walls and columns, instead of steel and reinforced concrete.

The Italian-style Bell Tower, or Campanile, is second in height only to the Washington Monument, and is visible from miles around.

The dome echoed the dome of the Capitol building and the style was therefore considered more suited to D.C.'s environment, as the Capitol was already in the process of being built.

Featured on the Great Dome are Marian symbols, symbols of the Virgin Mary in glass mosaic, each within a six-pointed Star of David, suggesting the Israelite lineage of Mary.

So, we have the fleur-de-lis, for example, French for the flower of the lily, and a symbol of purity and chastity.

So, we see the Tower of Ivory and we see the Marian monogram, as well as the intertwining monogram of the first letters of the words, Ave Maria, A-M, Latin for Hail Mary.

The Basilica has become a location for national and international pilgrimage.

It is the largest Catholic sacred building in America, with a capacity for 10,000 persons, and one of the largest in the world.

It has hosted three papal visits.

The Basilica is indeed a microcosm of the Catholic world as it contains over 80 chapels and oratories, each dedicated to the version of the Virgin honored in different parts of the world.

For example, the Chapel to Our Lady of Africa, funded by the National Black Catholic Congress, features a bas-relief depicting the experiences of African Americans from slavery through the Civil Rights Movement.

The Chapel to Our Lady of Guadalupe, with mosaic figures to the left and right, symbolizing the people of North, Central, and South America, carrying lighted candles in procession to the Virgin Mary is another example.

This chapel is also intended to convey a sense of solidarity between Catholics in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas.

In the annual event, when Our Lady of Guadalupe is carried into the basilica by devotees, we see dancers depicting the indigenous peoples of Central America.

- [Narrator] This shrine speaks to us with the voice of all America, with the voice of all the sons and daughters of America who have come here from the various countries of the old world.

These people speaking different languages, coming from different backgrounds of history, and traditionally in their own countries came together around the heart of a mother whom they all had in common.

(people clapping) - [Ori] This area became the hub of Catholic architectural developments in the expanding city by the mid 19th century, and is still popularly known as Little Rome.

By the late 20th century, there were more than 20 Catholic institutions in Northeast D.C. overall.

From Trinity Washington University created in 1997 to the St. John Paul II Shrine, elevated in 2014 to the status of a national shrine.

(gentle music) Between 1900 and 2000, dozens of new churches were built along the 16th Street corridor, a 6.5 mile stretch between the White House, where St. John's Episcopal Church had been established in 1816, at the Maryland border.

Many of the earlier ones were variations on and combinations of French and English, Romanesque and Gothic style.

By the post-World War I era, the intersection of 16th Street and Columbia Road offered a particularly enticing handful of new church structures.

Baptist church leaders first decided to build a national church, a National Baptist Church, that would serve as a memorial to Roger Williams, founder of the First Baptist Congregation in America in Rhode Island.

It was he who established Rhode Island as the first enclave in the Americas with freedom back in the 17th century.

Ground for the National Baptist Church was broken by President Warren Harding in 1921.

It was completed in 1926.

Some so think it was inspired by John Nash's Church of All Souls in London.

Its two lower stages are colonnaded rotundas, the Corinthian above the Ionic in the case of Nash's church tower, and the Doric above the Corinthian in the case of the Washington Building by Swartwout.

Nash's church is topped also by appointed spire.

The All Souls Unitarian Church here in D.C. was built around the same time in 1924.

The congregation had been founded in 1821 as the first Unitarian Church of Washington.

The church's founding members included President John Quincy Adams.

All Souls Church was very directly modeled on the Church of St. Martin in the Fields in London that had been built in 1726 by James Gibbs and became so popular as a church that it served as a model throughout the British Empire.

So, it is no surprise that it would be a model for a church here in Washington.

Its architecture in any case was and is an interesting combination.

The front part of it looks very much like a pagan Roman temple, porch columns, Corinthian capitals, supporting a triangular fronton, the sort of neoclassical style we've seen before, but, rising from its spine is this rather narrow steeple that suggests a kind of novel form of Gothic architecture.

So, we're talking about a structure that combines neoclassical and Gothic elements.

- All Souls Church Unitarian is actually today a Unitarian Universalist congregation.

Unitarian Universalism understands itself to be a faith community that does not require belief in any particular creed.

If you had asked the membership of All Souls in 1924, how many of them considered themselves Christian, I'll bet that almost 100% of them would've said, "Yes, I'm a Unitarian Christian."

If you were to ask the same question today, there would be Unitarian Universalist Jews, and UU Buddhists, and UU Hindus, and many folks who would say, "I'm a UU humanist."

Many of them are called to All Souls because of the opportunity to work for beloved community in the world, as a witness for justice, we pitch a big theological tent and try to welcome all of the wisdom of the great faith traditions into our religious space.

- [Ori] The church has a long tradition of promoting liberal religious views and social justice issues.

In the first half of the 19th century, it was known for its opposition to slavery.

- And that church has been a real leader in social activism throughout the 20th century.

For example, in the '40s and '50s, and and bringing African Americans into the church.

Reverend Eaton, the first African American pastor of the church, was there in the 1960s.

- [Ori] James Reeb, a martyr of the Civil Rights Movement, was assistant minister of All Souls prior to his murder in Selma, Alabama in 1965.

The Washington Chapel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was built in this same 16th Street and Columbia Road nexus in 1933, and it was sold in the late 1970s to the Unification Church associated with Korean pastor, Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

(gentle music) At around that same time, the neighborhood around Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, and Columbia Heights became an important center of cultural and religious life for an expanding Hispanic population, thanks to the influx of immigrants from Central America by the 1960s.

After the Civil War in El Salvador began in 1979, about half a million Salvadorans fled to the United States.

In D.C., they comprised the largest segment of the Latino population, which make up 11.5% of D.C. area residents and account for the greatest growth in the Catholic church.

Recently, a Salvadorian immigrant was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Washington Diocese.

The Shrine of the Sacred Heart, built in 1922 in Byzantine style and a center of Catholic religious life, gradually became a magnet for this influx and subsequent immigrant influxes.

The church has, in the last several decades, become important to several immigrant communities.

So, today's sermons are held in four languages here, English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Haitian Creole.

As we have noted earlier, however... - 16th Street is a line of Protestant churches, one after another.

The Shrine of the Sacred Heart is not on 16th Street.

- Local tradition maintains that the church was built on a spur off 16th Street because mainline Protestant leaders objected to a Roman Catholic church joining them.

Just as the linguistic and ethnic identities of some congregations were evolving, in some cases the denominational identity of many sacred structures continue to evolve.

The move to the suburbs by some congregations was sometimes a consequence of what is known as white flight that grew in part out of the desegregation of schools that took place in 1954.

An obvious example of this transformation is the 1963 change in Gunton Temple Memorial Presbyterian Church at 16th and Newton Streets.

- They moved out to a suburban site and in their place came the Canaan Baptist Church.

This was an African American congregation and the first to move to 16th Street.

And the pastor of the church was so pleased to have gained a 16th Street spot that he organized a grand parade to drive out and take possession of the church.

And that church has also been a key social community asset.

And in the '60s and '70s, there were a lot of meetings there held among leaders of Black civil rights movements activists.

And the church has has maintained a position of welcoming everyone ever since, and is still vibrant today.

As you move further up 16th Street, there are a variety of houses of worship.

One of them that's interesting is the former Greek Orthodox Church of Saints Helen and Constantine built in the 1950s.

The congregation was actually formed earlier around 1918 downtown.

There were a lot of Greek immigrants to the city, especially around the turn of the 20th century.

They just recently moved to a new site in Silver Spring, Maryland.

And there is now another immigrant congregation that has moved in.

It's called the Iglesia Ni Cristo, a Filipino congregation.

A Jewish congregation, built a synagogue, a beautiful white limestone building.

They were there a relatively short time and decided that they needed to move to the suburbs.

- [Ori] To a great extent, this was a function of the riots after Dr. Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968.

- [John] And in 1975 or so, the 19th Street Baptist Church moved in.

- [Ori] The congregation decided to keep the name of its previous location.

So, even though the church is now on 16th Street, it continues to be called the 19th Street Baptist Church.

When it was built, B'nai Israel formed an architectural bridge between the domed style, that characterized large American synagogues between about 1905 and World War II, and the more rectilinear style that emerged in the 1950s.

Certainly, the strongest influence on that change was the Holocaust, and the sense of being uprooted that it imposed on European Jewish communities, which could be felt architecturally in America.

The period also introduced an explosion of Jewish architects into the field of synagogue design and the deliberate use of Jewish symbols on the exterior.

Both Tifereth Israel and Ohev Sholom present monolithic geometric blocks as their front facades.

- [John] Ohev Shalom was also feeling the pressure to move out to the suburbs in the late '70s.

However, they decided to stay where they were.

And almost directly across the street is the Tifereth Israel congregation.

They moved there around the same time in the late '50s.

One of their members was the co-founder of a group called Neighbors Inc. that worked really hard to ensure that that upper 16th Shepherd Park area would remain integrated and that it wouldn't be a victim of white flight with all whites leaving.

- So, we see that as 16th Street developed over two centuries, many previously white Protestant churches towards the Maryland border became Jewish, African American, and Latino.

In our next episode, we will see places of worship built by Jews, Muslims, Greeks, Russians, and Hindus, each bringing a sacred piece of home to Washington, D.C. (orchestral music) (orchestral music continues) (orchestral music continues) (orchestral music continues)