WASHINGTON NATIONAL CATHEDRAL

also called Washington Cathedral, officially Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington, D.C., Episcopal cathedral chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1893 and established on Mount St. Alban (the highest point in the city) in 1907. Its cornerstone was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt. Although construction slowed during periods of economic hardship and stopped altogether during 1977-80, the building was completed in 1990. Designed and constructed in the 14th-century English Gothic style, the edifice was also built without the use of steel support in a centuries-old manner-using artists, sculptors, and stone masons. Radiant heating in the stone floor is one of its few concessions to modernity. The cathedral is built in the shape of a cross, its length extending some 530 feet (160 m), and can seat about 4,000; in the United States it is second in size only to New York City's Cathedral of St. John the Divine (still uncompleted).