Got Buttress?

If you turn slightly to the right after taking the picture I posted yesterday, this is what you see. That, ladies and gents, is a real live flying buttress. The building is the Unitarian Memorial Church in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. Fairhaven has a population of about 15,000 persons. But we’ve got Chartres quality buttresses. I wonder if many people appreciate that.

I doubt it. The church is little used, from what I can gather. There never seems to be any activity there when we’re around, and the only persons we ever saw exit that magnificent pile of stone came out of there the day we took this picture, and they were young men wearing flip-flops. The person that paid to have this elaborate and substantial building built, probably saw it as a manifestation of a substantial strain of thought and piety.

In the long run, he was wrong.

I’m grateful for the flying buttresses, just the same.