Who was William Halsey Wood? And why are they saying those terrible things about him?

William Halsey Wood [1855-1897] was an American architect who has slipped into the cracks of history. He is remembered--if at all--for a single design, one that was never built: the Cathedral of St. John-the-Divine on Manhattan Island, product of a competition won by another designer and completed by yet a third architectural firm to no one's satisfaction. Wood's ecstatic vision may, indeed, have been unbuildable.

Many things have been said about Halsey Wood during his lifetime and in the years immediately following the architect's premature death from tuberculosis at the age of forty-one. Some of those observations are scurrilous; some of them mystically poetic. All of them are probably justified, which makes Halsey Wood such a compelling character for me.

This blog is devoted to Halsey Wood; to the retrieval of his memory and the reevaluation of his reputation.