Hi everyone and welcome to my channel, History Calling. In today’s video we’re
going to look at a very unusual stained glass window with a unique and truly out of this
world ingredient at its core. It’s actually one of my all-time favourite windows (yes,
I am enough of a nerd that I have a favourite stained glass window – don’t judge me). I’m
talking about the one and only Space Window in Washington D.C.’s National Cathedral.
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The Space Window is housed here in the south side of the nave in the National Cathedral in
Washington D.C., or, to give it its full name, The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in
the City and Diocese of Washington. I think you can see why it’s typically called the National
Cathedral – it just rolls off the tongue a little easier than that! The Cathedral was built between
1907 and 1990, because quality takes time and the window, which is technically called either
the Science and Technology or the Scientists' and Technicians’ Window (I’ve seen both) was
gifted to the building by Thomas O. Paine, who had worked as an Administrator for NASA.
It is intended to celebrate man’s iconic journey to the moon in 1969 on the Apollo 11 mission,
during which Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the lunar surface.
It was designed by this man Rodney Winfield, an American artist from St Louis.
The bold geometric shapes we see in the window today represent the 12th version of the window
Winfield designed and this was because the previous 11 had been rejected due to strict
guidelines imposed by the Cathedral and NASA which demanded it incorporate things like figures and
maps. Eventually though, Winfield threw the rulebook out the window (no pun intended)
and imagined a very modern looking image (which, incidentally, was exactly what
his initial brief had been). Everyone agreed, it was a winner. The window, which is 19 feet high,
or 5.8 meters if you prefer, then took more than four years to create.
When selecting what colours to use for the celestial bodies depicted in the glass,
Winfield took inspiration from photographs taken during Apollo 11’s trip and wrote in
his journal that he wanted to communicate to the viewer ‘the immensity of the universe’.
The white dots you see are distant stars. According to information provided by the
Cathedral, the sphere on the right, roughly halfway down the window with some green glass
in it represents the Earth, while the white line that you can see running through the glass
is meant to represent the trajectory that manned spacecraft take to travel to the Moon,
which I therefore take to be the smallest sphere, in the lower right hand portion of the window
but do let me know in the comments below if you have a different interpretation of the imagery.
At the bottom of the picture is a biblical quote not completely visible in this photograph
due to the height the window sits at in the wall. It's from the book of Job, chapter 22, verse 12
and reads “Is not God in the height of Heaven?” which is of course very
appropriate for a window designed for a religious institution and based around the
idea of space travel and what humans can see when we look up towards the heavens.
The window is already fairly unusual for having no human figures in it and for depicting one
scene throughout, rather than multiple scenes in its three different lancets, however the
most special and certainly most noteworthy feature it boasts is what lies at its centre.
On 21 July 1974, a special service of Commemoration and Thanksgiving
took place in the Cathedral. It was five years and a day after Armstrong had taken his famous
‘small step for man’ and together with his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Edwin Aldrin (known as Buzz)
and Michael Collins, he was present at this service. Incidentally, if you’re wondering
why the event didn’t take place on the actual anniversary, it’s because that anniversary fell
on a Saturday in that year and those involved in organising the service preferred to have it take
place on a Sunday. In the course of the ceremony, during which the window was officially dedicated,
the trio presented the Cathedral with a small piece of lunar rock and here it is in situ.
This had been collected from the Moon’s Sea of Tranquillity by Armstrong and was gifted
with the permission of President Nixon for use in the Space Window, which had been designed
with a slot for such an artefact specifically in mind. This nearly didn’t happen however.
Nixon had initially refused to provide a piece of the moon for the window, because,
according to Rodney Winfield, the President and the Dean of the Cathedral, Francis Sayer,
didn’t get along. It was only when Nixon ‘got into trouble’ to use Winfield’s very polite phrase when
referring to a little scandal known as Watergate, that the President eventually relented and in
fact this piece remains the only moon rock America has ever given to a non-governmental institution.
To mark the event, Armstrong made a short statement, saying "On behalf of the President
and the people of the United States we present unto you this fragment of creation from beyond
the earth to be imbedded in the fabric of this house of prayer for all people."
When dedicating the window, Dean Sayer spoke, saying ‘Now bless we pray this window, a window of
peace and of light. A window of the haunting hues and colours in the depths of outer space. Bless
this place now set apart to receive a portion of thy creation from the Earth’s friendly satellite.’
Officially designated “Piece 230 of Apollo 11 rock no. 10057” by NASA
the fragment of basalt weighs only 7.18 grams and is more than 6cm wide. It’s housed in an
inert nitrogen environment, protected from the elements by tempered glass and steel and
is estimated to be a whopping 3.6 billion years old. It also contains the mineral pyroxferroite,
which had been unknown on Earth until the lunar landings. When given the opportunity to handle it,
Rodney Winfield found it to be ‘very very thin. You could see through it. It’s translucent’.
It wasn’t ultimately installed in the window until 1977 however, for fear that vandals might
steal it using nearby scaffolding which was in place until then due to the ongoing construction
work going on at the Cathedral (it wasn’t complete until 1990 remember). Decades later,
astronaut Michael Collins would comment that one of things he loved most about the window
was the juxtaposition it created with other parts of the building; 'Everything else at the
cathedral commemorates the old’ he said in 2011 ‘Here’s something that commemorates the new.'
Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed this little look at one of the most unusual and I think,
most beautiful, stained glass windows out there. I’ll leave some links in the description box
below if you’d like to hear Rodney Winfield speaking about his experience of designing it,
or see a clip of the dedication ceremony and let me know in the comments what you think of the
space window and if you have your own favourite stained glass window somewhere in the world. For
now though, I look forward to talking to you again in the next video and until then, keep learning.