LOL. Of course dumbass in chief was totally wrong as usual.
Well, a testament to what humans can do wrong and then prop up to keep from collapsing.
Um… why can’t the Vatican chip in? After all, it’s their cathedral.
I agree completely with that first sentence on all points, very much so. I also agree with all of what you said about the antiquity of Notre Dame; but The Washington Post article on the fire also quotes a tweet from Kate Wiles, a scholar at Kings’ College London:
A sad, sad day. Lifelong (and fairly militant) atheist here; but as a humanist, it’s very depressing to contemplate the loss of all that human toil and effort to create something so majestic and beautiful. And all of my fellow human beings who are Catholics, or Christians more generally, and who are therefore mourning this loss as something beyond history and esthetics, have my deepest sympathies today.
The cathedral (like almost all cathedrals in France) belongs to the state, not the church.
I feel for the people who lost a beloved artwork and for the history lost inside, but I’m not a fan of the building. I dislike classic Gothic since it is too overblown and decadent (while not disliking the English styles of Perpendicular Gothic and Victorian Gothic.)
No it’s not. It’s owned by France. They should kick in though.
ETA: Ninjaed by someone actually in France.
Yes, and other parts of the the interior are wood as well. I worked on a large project at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City 25-30 years ago and fire was a major concern. Because you weren’t just dealing with wood, you were dealing with wood that had absorbed a lot of paraffin due to centuries of candle-burning. We were told that this increased the flammability and the fire risk.
In fact, it seems we couldn’t. I read an article years ago about the estimated cost of building nowadays famous monuments of the past, like the Taj Mahal or Versailles. No memory about the costs, but something they mentioned I remember : that it would be pretty much impossible to rebuild any of these identically nowadays because of a massive lack of qualified manpower, like for instance stonemasons. The building of those major monuments involved a huge number of such craftsmen, and they’re nowhere to be found nowadays. The estimated costs given were based or building them with a concrete structure and without most of the niceties. So, for instance, the reconstructed Taj Mahal they considered for their cost estimates would only be concrete covered with marble “sheets” and without most of the delicate stone engraving.
I was fortunate enough to have seen it in person, on an Easter Sunday no less. Notre Dame is one of the world’s treasures, and it’s a shocking to think that a national symbol and something so iconic could just burned away completely in the span of less than a night.
I visited the original WTC so this could be the second major structure that I’ve seen destroyed in my lifetime.
There have to be millions of people who have been to both of those places. They were iconic structures in major tourist destinations.
A rebuild would take decades, even assuming they could find the craftsmen and funding needed. The National Cathedral in Washington DC is *still *being worked on, and it is over 100 years old. Admittedly, a project like rebuilding Notre Dame will provide the opportunity to increase the ranks of those craftsmen, but the skill required will still take years to develop.
I know this shows that I’m a twisted person, but the thought that occurred to me is why terrorists don’t use arson of historical buildings and vandalism of art more often.
Washington Post front page reporting the towers have been saved. Doesn’t look like much of the rest is going to make it, though.
Which is why it is almost certainly not insured. The repair bill will be huge. But it won’t be so big that the French government won’t be able to foot it. National governments tend not to insure their major historic monuments because their budgets are big enough to deal with unexpected contingencies even on this scale.
Actually, the experience of major restoration projects is often that the project creates the qualified manpower. This will be a chance for lots of new stonemasons etc. to learn those skills.
We’ll struggle to find thousands of oak trees of sufficient size to replace the roof beams, for a start.
By putting a misting system in it like they did for St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
That’s all we needed was that orange galoot to weigh in with a moronic tweet. I’m surprised the fucker didn’t blame it on Obama.
Good job by the Paris firefighters. What a Herculean job they faced and I hope the story is true that the structure has been saved. I hope they have a huge celebration when the reconstruction is complete.
Question on the ownership of the building- why wouldn’t it belong to the diocese?
For purposes of art and history, it really doesn’t matter whether an individual, or even a majority of individuals, dislikes a particular style. I don’t want to lose exemplars of styles that I dislike any more than I want to lose exemplars of styles that I like.
It probably could have waited a few days but it was spot on. The New York City fire department worked with St Patrick’s Cathedral group to bring it up to code. There’s really no reason not to do this.
Would you accept the deaths of family and friends because an older building wasn’t brought up to code? I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t but I could be wrong.