When former Vice President Dick Cheney’s funeral is held at the Washington National Cathedral, he will join a bipartisan but exclusive list of figures memorialized.
When former Vice President Dick Cheney‘s funeral is held Thursday at the Washington National Cathedral in the nation’s capital, he will join a bipartisan but exclusive list of towering figures memorialized there, in a church that tells the story of America on hallowed ground.
Presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Jimmy Carter have received state funerals at the gothic-style cathedral. Funeral services have also been held there for Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Supreme Court Justice, and the moonwalking astronaut Neil Armstrong. The list of notable figures interred at the cathedral includes the author and activist Hellen Keller. Just one president, Woodrow Wilson, is buried there.
The church’s history and tradition, said Washington National Cathedral Provost Rev. Canon Jan Naylor Cope, put it “at the intersection of the civic and the sacred.” The funerals held there shed light both on the deceased and their place in the country’s history.
Titans of American history keep watch over the cathedral, as statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln stand in two separate bays near the entrance of the nave. The cathedral has five chapels on the main level and four chapels and burial vaults on the lower level, or the crypt.
French-born architect Pierre L’Enfant’s original design for Washington included a church “for national purposes.” In 1893, a congressional charter was authorized to build a cathedral dedicated to religion, education and charity.
Construction on the Protestant Episcopalian church began in 1907, with President Theodore Roosevelt present to help lay the foundation, but wasn’t totally completed until 1990.
