Constructing ethics and the ethics of construction: John Ruskin and the humanity of the builder

Cross Currents, Fall, 2002 by John Matteson

(11.) Howard E. Quirk, The Living Cathedral: St. John the Divine, (New York: Crossroad Books, 1993), 24.

(12.) George Ancona, Cutters, Carvers, & the Cathedral (New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1995), n.p.

(13.) Quirk, 24-25.

(14.) Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, II, 72.

This essay was first presented at the "Ethics and Architecture" conference on April 6, 2002, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City co-sponsored by CrossCurrents.

John Matteson is Assistant Professor of English at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. He is at work on a book about Bronson Alcott and American Utopias and has recently written for New England Quarterly, Streams of William James, and Architectural Record. He gratefully acknowledges the help and inspiration of John D. Rosenberg, Mary Donovan, and Bruce Silverberg.