The idea for “a great church for national purposes” was first proposed by Washington, D.C.’s master planner Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1791. The cathedral is made from Indiana limestone. Weekly services take place alongside sightseeing tours and special events, and although it was founded as an Episcopal cathedral, longtime docent Bob Magner says that one would be hard pressed to “find a faith that wasn’t represented” within the building’s thick Indiana limestone walls. They are part of the permanent collection of Washington National Cathedral, which first and foremost is still an active house of worship. These treasures aren’t housed in a Smithsonian institution, although they very well could be. Soaring hundreds of feet above it all are 288 angels, 215 dazzling stained glass windows, 112 gargoyles, and grotesques carved in the likenesses of famous figures including Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks, and Star Wars villain Darth Vader. Nearby sits a pulpit from England’s Canterbury Cathedral, a cross made from fragments of the Pentagon after September 11, 2001, and a stone from the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Under the same vaulted roof resides the remains of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th president and only former Commander in Chief to be buried in the District of Columbia. Five miles northwest of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a 7.18-gram basalt rock from the Moon’s Sea of Tranquility brought back to Earth by the crew of Apollo 11.
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