The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is located at One Hundred and Twelfth Street and Amsterdam Avenue. It is shown here from the south east, looking north west, from somewhere in Morningside Park. Construction on the Cathedral began in 1892 under the direction of architects Heins and LaFarge. During the years of their involvement with the Cathedral’s construction the two partners also designed the decorative elements for New York’s first Subway stations – those of the 1904 ITR. In 1911 the firm of Cram and Ferguson took over architectural work on the Cathedral and Ralph Adams Cram began designing what would become the Cathedral’s most distinctive feature, its one hundred twenty-four foot tall nave. In 1941, when the entire length of the hall had been constructed, work on the building was suspended until 1979. It has never been declared complete, though even as a work in progress it is the world’s largest cathedral and third largest church.

"The Cathedral on the Heights" is the second of the book’s two chapters to focus on a cathedral, the first being chapter fourteen, "The Cathedral on the Avenue." The two chapter titles differ by only one word – the last word in each title. Likewise the roman numerals which number the chapters (XIV and XIX) differ only by their last character. The Arabic numerals used in the books pagination are 42 and 52 – also differing by one (albeit out of a possible two) character. Chapter fourteen is emphatically recalled by chapter nineteen through these striking similarities, and the later is able to conclude some of what in chapter fourteen had been left as narrative loose ends. Where chapter fourteen had left the reader with a sense that St. Patrick’s Cathedral could be comprehended only from a distance which the surrounding metropolis made unthinkable, chapter nineteen satisfies these lingering but frustrated desires by presenting a cathedral that is available to the eye at great distance.

But even as it meets the demands which St. Patrick’s cannot, St. John the Divine presents certain difficulties of its own. Unlike St. Patrick’s, the Cathedral on the Heights is a product of the twentieth century – and Marcus describes it in these terms. Like the Woolworth Building – so often called the "Cathedral of Commerce" – The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is legible only through the language of structural enormity. Furthermore, it is an unfinished work, and as such it lacks the "dignity of age" for which Marcus values buildings like Trinity Church. These qualities of the Cathedral are representative of qualities in the twentieth century more generally; it lacks the legitimacy of a long history, and can achieve aesthetic value (which, Marcus begins to concede, can be breathtaking) only by "dominating" the older structures around it.