Twenty-one years after St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was destroyed in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava has created a beacon for reflection in its place.

On 6 December, Calatrava, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Greek Orthodox Church officials announced that St. Nicholas was finally complete.

Originally expected to have been finished in 2016 as part of the Oculus, a transportation hub and shopping mall built alongside the One World Trade Center, fundraising and construction delays, and the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the completion of the new church in Lower Manhattan.

Louis Katsos, President of Jekmar Associates, Inc. in New York City who assisted the project on a pro-bono basis, told Neos Kosmos: “I was asked to help with construction management advice, and monitoring in its construction completion by the Board of the Friends of St. Nicholas, who were established and tasked with raising the money to finally finish building it. This was after the initial construction was stopped for a number of years due to various financial and construction issues which have been reported.”

Neos Kosmos asked Santiago Calatrava a series of questions regarding the deeper meaning behind the design of St. Nicholas and the National Shrine. The structures have been described as “the culmination of Calatrava-designed projects” at the World Trade Center Campus.

“To see the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine finally open is emblematic of Lower Manhattan’s storied future and defining past,” said Santiago Calatrava. He also expressed gratitude to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, the Friends of St. Nicholas and the WTC Memorial Museum for choosing him to realise the project and their support throughout the course of reconstruction.

A ‘Throne of Wisdom’ inspired by Byzantine and Hellenic Symbolism

“The architecture was developed following an in-depth study of the relationship between Byzantine architecture and numbers,” Calatrava said in a statement.

Like the Hagia Sophia, St. Nicholas’ dome features 40 windows and 40 ribs visible from both the interior and the external subdivision of the roof.

Inspired by a Byzantine mosaic in Hagia Sophia, the Virgin Mary as the Throne of Wisdom or Sedes sapientiae, Calatrava conceived a structure symbolic of the metamorphoses of the spirit into a place of worship embeded in the mosaic façade of St. Nicholas.

“The idea is of a metamorphosis of the images of the Virgin as the Throne of Wisdom and turning it into a temple of the Church,” Calatrava said, who used a derivative method through a watercolour drawing process.

“Just as the Byzantine churches introduced the shape of the cross in the plan of the churches, along with the order and proportions of the human body, anthropomorphism was introduced into architecture through Christianity.”

Drawing inspiration from the Church of the Rotunda in Salonica, the main altar of the church lies under the all-embracing span of a central dome; at the centre of which is the image of Christ (Pantocrator), ruler of the universe, surrounded by twenty old testament prophets.

The traditional iconographic program of the Shrine was fixed by Bishop Joachim of Amissos, a world-renowned scholar on Byzantine iconography, and the painting was executed by a priest-monk from the Monastery of Xenonphontos on Mt. Athos, the 1,000-year-old monastic republic in Greece. Father Loukas brought a subdued style to his iteration of the “Hagiographic School” of the 14th Century.

Most of the icons were painted on Mt. Athos and brought to New York for installation by the monk.

The corner towers and two west-facing towers are clad in alternating large and small horizontal bands of white and gray marble reminiscent of the Church of the Holy Savior in Chora, Turkey.

One can also see the parallelism with Ancient Greece given that the entire exterior of the structure was intentionally made of Pentelic marble to parallel the Pentelic marble that makes up the Parthenon in Athens.

A Building Alive, a Beacon of Hope and Connection for the Community

“Architecture, beyond being linked to human uses from a practical point of view, can have an intrinsic symbolic value, which is not written or expressed in a specific way but in an abstract and synthetic manner, sending a symbolic message, which will reach posterity. It is in this way that the message of works such as Hagia Sophia has reached our days,” Calatrava said.

For the architect every building is alive, it breathes and exhales light. To reflect that vibration and fluidity St. Nicholas’ dome is made of thin stone and glass laminated panels that are illuminated from behind.

“When illuminated, these areas of the façade create an incandescent aura that makes the entire church appear to glow from within, invoking the feeling of being a beacon of hope amid the night.”

Calatrava collaborated with DLR Group on the lighting design for St. Nicholas Church to allow the church to read as solid stone by day, and then glow “by the light of 10,000 candles” at night while also carefully balancing supplemental lighting with the ever-changing natural light within the church interior.

Archbishop Elpidophoros of America stated that the shrine is a place for everyone who comes to the sacred ground at the World Trade Center to imagine and envision a world where mercy is inevitable, reconciliation is desirable, and forgiveness is possible. “We will stand here for the centuries to come, as a light on the hill, a shining beacon to the world of what is possible in the human spirit, if we will only allow our light to shine before all people, as the light of this Shrine for the Nation will illuminate every night sky to come in our magnificent City,” Elpidophoros said.

With the aim of bringing people together, the building boasts an additional space open to the local community for meetings and other activities. These spaces are a significant component of the building’s program as they accentuate the church’s open and welcoming relationship with the greater World Trade Center Memorial site as well as the community of Lower Manhattan.

“I hope to see this structure serve its purpose as a sanctuary for worship but also as a place for reflection on what the city endured and how it is moving forward,” Calatrava said.

“Architecture can have an intrinsic symbolic value, which is not written or expressed in a specific way but in an abstract and synthetic manner, sending a message and thus leaving a lasting legacy.”

Video courtesy of Lou Katsos: