Photo of the Day: Grotto, Church of Notre Dame, Morningside Heights, NYC

A couple of weeks ago, at lunch with three college friends, I heard about the Church of Notre Dame. With most of my activities confined to the cluster of buildings around the central quadrangle of Columbia University in my college days decades ago, I never had occasion to see what this Roman Catholic Church just off the campus was like.

So, 46 years after coming to Morningside Heights, I decided to rectify the omission. At the time of the day when I passed by, the church was closed, but I was able to take this photo of its picturesque grotto.

The grotto began life as a chapel in 1910. The architectural firm Dans and Otto developed both the chapel and a replica of the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette of Lourdes in France in 1858.

Soon, a larger church needed to be built—an expansion carried out by another architectural firm, Cross and Cross. But the grotto remains standing behind the church’s main altar, a continuing reminder of the first altar and chapel at the Church of Notre Dame.