as it is sometimes called—old because the Gilded Age mansions and Depression Era brownstones are in advanced stages of decay; the rooftops leaking, the foundations sinking imperceptibly into sandy soil, the copper pipes waiting to be harvested from the plaster walls and sold for scrap; old because no developer has been willing to risk the necessary investment to tear down these decomposing behemoths—the grand movie palace, the marble rotunda of a failed bank, the famous hotel ballroom with its Corinthian columns covered in gangland graffiti—to clear enough land for a sparkling new shopping center, a high dollar bistro, a fashionable boutique, a well-lit parking garage. Of the city’s glorious past, little now remains. The school alone endures as a kind of living artifact; a manifestation, depending on one’s perspective, of Milton’s Pandemonium or Augustine’s City of God. With its immense gothic tower of rough-hewn stone and its anarchy of corridors and antechambers and enormous frescoed galleries, the school has grown into a city within a city, a citadel of secrets, one with obscure and hidden geometries designed to keep the curious away from the ancient and forbidden rites rumored to take place inside.
What do You think about The Natural Order Of Things?
