MOC: Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi

[SavaTheAggie]

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The Cathedral of St. Francis of Assisi

A fictional cathedral based on two real churches - The St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City and Chartres Cathedral in France. The basic floorplan and most of the features are based on the neo-gothic style St. Patrick's, whereas the more classical gothic style such as flying buttresses and the asymmetrical towers are based on Chartres.

The Cathedral sits on eight 32x32 baseplates, and breaks apart in four baseplate pair sections. It features a full interior, swinging bells, "stained glass", plenty of interesting SNOTwork, and resident minifigs.

--Tony

[Matija]

It's just beautiful. Thanks for sharing!

[RoryoCox]

Amazing. Really great the details are really good.

It looks awesome and realistic.

Well Done

[Commodore Hornbricker]

Truely incredible and epic! You did an amazing job with this MOC and I can really appreciate how we you documented the build with photos. I'd love to know more about how long it took to build, etc.

[Rick]

Simply breathtaking.

[Wout]

Wow, great!

Love the details.

[gunm]

Wow, that's simply amazing--I had to do a double take with the initial picture in the post.

Great design--looks accurate with incredible detail. I like the stained glass effects.

[hhcBrick]

Beautiful model! I love how you've made the stained glass.

[Milan]

WOW...

Epic...I like these magnificient buildings!

[Big Cam]

That is amazing, if it wasn't for the figs, I'd be skeptical that it is Lego, it looks so good and the architectural details are just stunning.

[lightningtiger]

Just one word.............AWESOME !

Beautiful and clever designing 'SavaTheAggie' - highly detailed - right down to church members, pews and stainglass windows.

Excellent work and I'm a conformist! 'SavaTheAggie' I'm a conformist! !

[frogstudio]

Congratulations!!!!! Really impressive!!!!

[Ezechielle]

I followed your work on this cathedral at the beginning, I'm impressed by the result! The rear is just amazing (like the rest but that's my favorite part).

[Lord Arjay]

Sometimes words are not enough, this is one of those cases.

[greg3]

Stunning work!!! A real work of art.... I love the details especially the windows and the "carvings" above the doors.... brilliant!!

[dr_spock]

That's amazing. Very excellent work.

[Gunman]

no words to say...

[Redcross]

This is a magnificent achievement. Just as with the building of a real cathedral it inspires the community and demonstrates the power of the builder. congratulations

[SavaTheAggie]

Thanks much, all!

Truely incredible and epic! You did an amazing job with this MOC and I can really appreciate how we you documented the build with photos. I'd love to know more about how long it took to build, etc.

Start to finish it took about five months, but several weeks of that was spent looking for the money to buy or waiting on parts. I worked on it for a few hours every night, when I had the parts, but it wouldn't have gone nearly as fast had I not sorted the majority of my collection beforehand

Simply breathtaking.

Thanks for the kind words.

I followed your work on this cathedral at the beginning, I'm impressed by the result! The rear is just amazing (like the rest but that's my favorite part).

The east end (the rear of the building) was the part I was most nervous about building, but I have to admit it turned out pretty good. There's a lot of floating bricks in it, though. Something I had hoped to avoid, but couldn't.

This is a magnificent achievement. Just as with the building of a real cathedral it inspires the community and demonstrates the power of the builder. congratulations

Very high praise indeed, thank you.

--Tony

[Dragonator]

I can't believe I missed this when you posted it last month Sava, what a beautiful building! The sheer size of it is imposing and impressive, just what cathedrals are all about. One thing that really struck me as soon as I saw this was the detail in the stained glass windows, simply amazing, particularly the effects you managed to achieve with the circular ones. The cross vault is lovely, a wonderful curve to that and such a neat architectural detail. Just looking at this reminds me of the pictures I've seen of medieval European cathedrals, with the gallery around the top of the interior and the detailed windows and pointed architecture. The rounded end of the sanctuary is also particularly well done. Did you have much trouble with the upper sections and balance? It looks fairly solidly built, but I'm interested to know (my last roof was very prone to collapsing if moved too much, although it had the added problem of needing to be removable).

I'm intrigued by the slant on the front step, is that a reference to aging or something else? It caught my eye and made me wonder.

Overall very, very impressive, a truly inspirational piece of work, well done. Lovely place to photograph it too, I bet you got some funny looks!

[SavaTheAggie]

I can't believe I missed this when you posted it last month Sava, what a beautiful building! The sheer size of it is imposing and impressive, just what cathedrals are all about. One thing that really struck me as soon as I saw this was the detail in the stained glass windows, simply amazing, particularly the effects you managed to achieve with the circular ones. The cross vault is lovely, a wonderful curve to that and such a neat architectural detail. Just looking at this reminds me of the pictures I've seen of medieval European cathedrals, with the gallery around the top of the interior and the detailed windows and pointed architecture. The rounded end of the sanctuary is also particularly well done. Did you have much trouble with the upper sections and balance? It looks fairly solidly built, but I'm interested to know (my last roof was very prone to collapsing if moved too much, although it had the added problem of needing to be removable).

I'm intrigued by the slant on the front step, is that a reference to aging or something else? It caught my eye and made me wonder.

Overall very, very impressive, a truly inspirational piece of work, well done. Lovely place to photograph it too, I bet you got some funny looks!

Thanks much! Unfortunately I cannot take much credit for several of the designs I used, such as the Rose Windows and the basic design of the other stained glass. I've edited them from their original creators, but they're still borrowed designs. I gave full credit where I could throughout the pictures posted to Flickr.

The Cathedral is pretty solid, the only real problem I ran into with the roof is not collapse, but misalignment. As I was trying to install the ceiling and roof on top, I discovered the walls of the cathedral were leaning inward. With all the main supports on the outside pushing in, without a ceiling and another wall to work against, it was really performing its job. It took quite a lot of force to pull the walls apart enough to line up the studs of the ceiling.

I'm not sure where you are seeing a slant on the front step, but if there is one it isn't intentional. It must be a byproduct of it being transported from my house to the back of my truck to the photoshoot.

I did get a few funny looks while I photographed it. I was actually hoping someone would come up and ask me about it, but the few people that were there (it was a friday morning - not too many people at that particular church at that particular time) kept a good distance.

--Tony

[Teddy]

Thanks much! Unfortunately I cannot take much credit for several of the designs I used, such as the Rose Windows and the basic design of the other stained glass. I've edited them from their original creators, but they're still borrowed designs. I gave full credit where I could throughout the pictures posted to Flickr.

The Cathedral is pretty solid, the only real problem I ran into with the roof is not collapse, but misalignment. As I was trying to install the ceiling and roof on top, I discovered the walls of the cathedral were leaning inward. With all the main supports on the outside pushing in, without a ceiling and another wall to work against, it was really performing its job. It took quite a lot of force to pull the walls apart enough to line up the studs of the ceiling.

I'm not sure where you are seeing a slant on the front step, but if there is one it isn't intentional. It must be a byproduct of it being transported from my house to the back of my truck to the photoshoot.

I did get a few funny looks while I photographed it. I was actually hoping someone would come up and ask me about it, but the few people that were there (it was a friday morning - not too many people at that particular church at that particular time) kept a good distance.

--Tony

Hi Tony,

Have been following this project from the start. I really love how you put the things togheter. Borrowing techniques and designs that work and add them in your MOC is the way that Design progresses, and I absolutely love it when people are doing that and add their own twist to it.

The trick is to use them in a way that they work well togheter and which is ditinctly yours and fits your ideas for your MOC.

Great MOC!

If you are ever going to do a large MOC like this again, my only advise for "improvement" would be to add some more subtle random color changes in the exterior walls.

I noticed you did use old and new grey bricks. You could for example put 1x1 and 1x2 tan plates inbetween the old grey bricks. To give the illusion the church is build up from smaller bricks. Just my two cents.

Kind regards,

Teddy

[XimenaPaulina]

Excellent work Sava! Absolutely stunning work of art!

[Pirate Pete]

Wow, stunningly beautiful architecture and very lifelike. job-well-done, my friend!

[Holodoc]

Good to see Pirate Pete brought up this topic again - how could I miss it?

This is so incredibly beautiful, I'm speechless.

I always wanted to build a church, but never figured out how to do the roofs.

There are plenty points of inspiration in your excellent MOC, thank you so much for sharing.

And it has a detailed interior, too!

I bookmarked your folder.