Page:The House of the Lord.djvu/220

204 gallery is not continuous with the walls. At intervals of twelve to fifteen feet great beams connect the gallery with the wall buttresses, but between these beams the gallery is set forward two and one-half feet from the inside of the walls and the open spaces are guarded by a high railing. It is believed that the surprising acoustic properties of the building are due in part to this feature of construction; the great dome is, in fact, a colossal whispering gallery, as the hundreds of thousands of visitors who have inspected the building know. When it is emptied save for the few, the fall of a pin dropped at the focal point of the ellipse near one end of the building may be heard at the corresponding point near the other end. The convenient seating capacity of the building, including that of the gallery, is nearly nine thousand, though under conditions of crowding, congregations much larger than this have assembled.

At the west end are the stands including the pulpits. There are really three pulpits rising in tiers or terraces; these afford accommodations for Church officers of different grades in authority. On either side of the pulpit-terraces are extended platforms for other bodies of Priesthood. Behind the stands and pulpits, rising on either side to the level of the gallery and occupying the space in front of the great organ, is the choir space, seated to accommodate approximately three hundred singers, with extra provision in the gallery for nearly as many more.

At the west end of the building is the great organ, generally admitted to be one of the best instruments of its class ever built. At the time of its construction it was the largest organ in this country and the second or third