The Pennsylvania Railroad and Pittsburgh Plate Glass were foundations of the fortune that have supported the construction of the Cathedral of the New Church for nearly a century. Designed by New York City Gothicists Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson, it is one of the premier examples of historic building practice, here represented by masonry, wood, ironwork, and stained glass guilds whose members handcrafted every element of the cathedral. Ralph Adams Cram's evocative design is intended to suggest the evolution of a site from the early Middle Ages in the Romanesque-styled Ezekiel Tower through to the fourteenth-century French Gothic of the main building and tower. Arthur Kingsley Porter, a Harvard medievalist, viewed the complex as “alone of modern buildings … worthy of comparison with the best of the middle ages.” Rivaling the Washington, D.C., National Cathedral and New York's St. John the Divine (also by Cram), it attests to the continuing hold of Gothic on the popular imagination.