As firefighters risked their lives to keep Notre-Dame cathedral from collapsing this past Monday, one imagined them fighting to save not only a building but an iconic symbol of France's greatest achievements and cultural heritage. With France itself teetering on the edge of political and economic upheaval, it seemed symbolic of the country's fight to keep a grip on the tenuous connection between its past and an uncertain future. The future of the cathedral itself—and particularly its spire—is likely to be drawn into a similar debacle. No one is debating whether Notre-Dame should be rebuilt, of course. The moment it was clear that the cathedral's towers had been saved, President Macron promised it would be. Within 24 hours of the blaze, $650 million for repairs had already been pledged from people such as Bernard Arnault, chief executive of LVMH, and companies such as Apple. And today, the French government announced that it will hold an international architecture competition to replace the collapsed spire. Notre-Dame, which was undergoing a $170 million restoration at the time of the fire, will live to see another chapter in its life. Once immediate concerns are addressed—a makeshift roof must be temporarily installed and relics and artworks moved elsewhere for safekeeping—the question is, what will the long-term process of rebuilding look like? Should the custodians of Notre-Dame try to restore and replicate exactly what was lost, or move into the future with materials and aesthetics that speak to our current time and technology? Spire Of Notre Dame De Paris Against Cloudy Sky Photo: Kate Vredevoogd / EyeEm Construction on the epic Gothic structure began in 1163 and was completed around 1240. While few primary records of the building process exist, one architectural historian recently laser-mapped the cathedral, recording every nook and cranny. While that may make it easier to replicate various sections of the building, it's no surprise that many materials used to build Notre-Dame centuries ago are no longer relevant or available. Take, for example, the 13,000 trees used to create the cathedral's roof and framing, which came from primary forests. Comparable timber simply isn't an option. While most experts agree that the craftspeople and knowledge exist to re-create various sections of Notre-Dame, if construction materials and techniques are radically different now, should the aesthetics of the rebuilt structure reflect our modern times, or merely replicate a style from the past? In the announcement for the spire contest, officials noted that winning designs will have to be adapted for contemporary materials. That may be an indication that the new spire will look entirely different than anything from the past. Story continues Such questions are sure to be hotly debated in the coming months and years. To answer them, it's helpful to think of the cathedral as a living monument that already has seen extensive changes throughout the course of its nearly 850-year life. For example, the spire that tragically burned and toppled Monday was not original to the cathedral. It was added during a contentious 19th-century restoration project by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who sought not to preserve the fabric of the original building, but to visually calm the chaotic complexities of Gothicism. In doing so, Viollet-le-Duc was revising history on his own terms. Jacqueline Jung, associate professor in Yale University's department of history of art, points out that the version of Notre-Dame we are most familiar with looks quite different than the original structure. “What we're really seeing is a 19th-century building that looks like a 13th-century building,” she tells AD. Paris Assesses Damage Following Notre Dame Blaze Photo: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images Rebuilding a spire that already represented an inauthentic version of historic architecture begins to feel like an odd choice for some. “If you do so, you're sort of falsely creating history,” says Meredith Cohen, associate professor of the history of art and architecture in the department of art history at UCLA. “You can't re-create the past, so don't even try,” says Cohen. Instead, she suggests that France should “build something that harmonizes” but that is aesthetically relevant to the modern era. Some historians argue a familiar building that looks like it did previously relieves viewers of uncomplicated juxtapositions that make it easier to compartmentalize history. But an inauthentic reincarnation could feel like a Disney-ified version of Gothic architecture that glosses over its bumps and warts. “Any building that has existed for 1,000 years goes through major transformations,” says Jeffrey Murphy, a partner at Murphy Burnham & Buttrick Architects, who led the restoration process at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Regardless of style, Murphy says, a patchwork of materials can impact the evolution of a building over time. “There is a certain honesty that you can convey through preservation.” “There's an opportunity to make this building more resilient, make it safer and a more sustainable building,” adds Murphy. “As an architect, I'm optimistic that they'll be able to bring this building back.” Weaving an apt and accurate tale of history through Notre-Dame's next iteration will surely be an ongoing challenge. But ultimately, says Murphy, the most important question is, “How do we make this building go for another thousand years?”<doc-sep>Crowds gather to sing hymns outside the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris as it is engulfed by flames. Crowds gather to sing hymns outside the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris as it is engulfed by flames.... Surfacing like a golden symbol of hope, Notre Dame’s altar cross has emerged shining from the wreckage of yesterday’s devastating fire. Parisians and people around the world watched in horror on Monday evening as a huge fire ripped through the 850-year-old gothic cathedral, causing its spire and part of the vaulted roof to collapse and triggering a scramble to save its precious relics and artworks. As pictures of the damage begin to circulate, billionaires and local governments pledged nearly 500 million euros ($790m) to help restore the French icon. However, experts are now warning it could take decades to rebuild. Asked how long the restoration could take, Eric Fischer, head of the foundation in charge of restoring the 1000-year-old Strasbourg cathedral, which recently underwent a three-year facelift, said: “I’d say decades.” “The damage will be significant. But we are lucky in France to still have a network of excellent heritage restoration companies, whether small-time artisans or bigger groups,” he told AFP. Mr Fischer said the ability to rebuild the colossal cathedral in a manner that respects its original form and character would depend on the plans, diagrams and other materials available to the architects. They would need “a maximum of historical data or more recent data gathered with modern technology such as 3D scans” of the kind used in the restoration of the Strasbourg cathedral, he said. TWITTER PICTURE OF CATHERDAL GOES VIRAL An hour before a devastating fire ripped through the Notre Dame Cathedral, a father and daughter were captured happily playing in front of the historic monument in a photograph that has since gone viral. The photo was taken before the sun set and the blaze and its bright orange fire lit up the Parisian sky. I took this photo as we were leaving #NotreDame about an hour before it caught on fire. I almost went up to the dad and asked if he wanted it. Now I wish I had. Twitter if you have any magic, help him find this 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/pEu33ubqCK — Brooke Windsor (@brookeawindsor) April 16, 2019 Brooke Windsor said she took the picture of a father and his daughter enjoying the 850-year-old landmark, visited by up to 14 million tourists every year. “I almost went up to the dad and asked if he wanted it,” she said. “Now I wish I had. Twitter if you have any magic, help him find this.” Twitter users, looking for a light moment in the Notre Dame tragedy, quickly responded. The tweet has been retweeted more than 35,000 times and liked by more than 68,000 people. “This is going to become THAT photo,” Michelle Bhasin said. “So sad to see the building looking serene and safe in the sun,” Theodora Wayte wrote. “Just before this dreadful disaster.” The father is yet to be identified. A raging fire engulfed the roof of the iconic cathedral and toppled its spire as thousands of people watched on in horror from the streets below just after 6.30pm Paris time. More than 500 firefighters worked to finally extinguish the blaze after it burned for more than six hours, devouring the 12th century wooden frame and causing more than two thirds of the cathedral’s roof to collapse. NOTRE DAME’S BIGGEST DRAWS WERE ALSO ITS DOWNFALL Some of the main reasons about 14 million people flock to Notre Dame every year could also be the reason the cathedral burned so quickly, experts claim. Experts say it could be the combination of a structure that’s more than 850 years old, built with heavy timber construction and soaring open spaces, and lacking sophisticated fire-protection systems that left firefighters with devastatingly few options. “Very often when you’re confronted with something like this, there’s not much you can do,” John Jay College fire science professor Glenn Corbett told AP. Fire hoses looked overmatched — more like gardening equipment than firefighting apparatus — as flames raged across the cathedral’s wooden roof and burned bright orange for hours. Some of the factors that made Notre Dame a must-see for visitors to Paris — its age, sweeping size and French Gothic design featuring masonry walls and tree trunk-sized wooden beams — also made it a tinderbox and a difficult place to fight a fire, Fire Administrator G. Keith Bryant said. With a building like that, it’s nearly impossible for firefighters to attack a fire from within. Instead, they have to be more defensive “and try to control the fire from the exterior,” Mr Bryant said, a former fire chief in Oklahoma and past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. “When a fire gets that well involved it’s very difficult to put enough water on it to cool it to bring it under control.” And while there’s a lot of water right next door at the Seine River, getting it to the right place is the problem, he said. “There are just not enough resources in terms of fire apparatus, hoses to get that much water on a fire that’s that large.” Because of narrower streets, which make it difficult to manoeuvre large ladder fire trucks, European fire departments don’t tend to have as large of ladders as they do in the United States, Mr Bryant said. RELATED: Host suddenly ends Notre Dame interview RELATED: Human chain saves Jesus Christ’s Crown of Thorns MILLIONS ALREADY PLEDGED FOR NOTRE DAME FIX The only thing left burning inside the cathedral is the gaping hole left where Notre Dame’s iconic spire once stood. Sparks were falling to the ground late Monday night giving the cathedral an eerie, red glow. Despite the devastating impact, millions of dollars have already been promised to return Notre Dame to its former glory. French billionaire Francois-Henri Pinault, married to actress Salma Hayek, has pledged 100 million euros ($A157 million) towards the rebuilding of Notre Dame. In a statement sent to AFP the CEO of the Kering group, which owns Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent fashion houses, said the money towards “the effort necessary to completely rebuild Notre Dame” would be paid by the Pinault family’s investment firm Artemis. French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to rebuild the cathedral. “We will rebuild Notre Dame because it is what the French expect,” he said, describing Notre Dame as “the epicentre of our life” and the cathedral of “all the French”, whether religious or not. The president said he would seek international help to restore the cathedral. “The worst has been avoided although the battle is not yet totally won,” the president said, adding that he would launch a national funding campaign on Tuesday and call on the world’s “greatest talents” to help rebuild the monument. “I’m telling you all tonight — we will rebuild this cathedral together. This is probably part of the French destiny. And we will do it in the next years. Starting tomorrow, a national donation scheme will be started that will extend beyond our borders,” Mr Macron said. ‘EVERYTHING IS BURNING’ Notre Dame spokesman Andre Finot told French media that “everything is burning, nothing will remain from the frame” of the beloved 850-year-old structure. A spokesman said the entire wooden frame of the cathedral would likely come down. Authorities are still working to determine the extent of damage to the vault of the edifice. The stonework and stained glass of the edifice recreate images and lessons from the Bible. Paris Fire Department commander general Jean-Claude Gallet said the cathedral’s main structure was saved after hours of work by firefighters on the scene. “We can consider that the main structure of Notre Dame has been saved and preserved”, Mr Gallet told reporters outside the cathedral. Deputy Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said that for the first time “the fire had decreased in intensity” while still urging “extreme caution”. Earlier on Monday, Mr Gallet said the next hour-and-a-half was “crucial” in order to see if the fire could be contained. “There’s a risk that the great bells fall.<doc-sep>A group of excited Dutch 14-year-olds has come back to see the ruin after the drama of the blaze they witnessed last night, on their first trip to Paris. They have a packed agenda but they are solemn and respectful when they talk about the disaster. It's a sad moment for Dutch people too, they say. Everyone knows Notre-Dame.<doc-sep>
You might have thought that the terrible fire in Notre Dame on Monday was the kind of moment that would transcend politics and our petty political divisions. Then again, this is 2019. First, people on the right-wing fringe started pushing the claim that the fire was a “jihadist terror attack”—despite zero evidence that the fire was something other than an accident related to renovation work. Rumors of arson were promptly picked by on Twitter by InfoWars “journalist” Paul Joseph Watson (but of course!) and amplified by the Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy, who claimed that the timing was connected to both Easter Week and revenge for the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque shootings. Holy Week✅ Exactly one month after NZ✅ Numerous French Church desecrations recently reported✅ Thwarted ISIS attack on same target previously✅ Probably nothing. https://t.co/OZOqGMWPUB — Faith J Goldy ✝️ (@FaithGoldy) April 15, 2019 Actor James Woods both hinted at arson and lamented Christianity’s presumed erasure from European soil. Whether by design or accident, the great and glorious history of Christianity is being eradicated from the face of the “new” Europe. #Heartbreak — James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) April 15, 2019 It wasn’t just Twitter noise, either. On the unfortunately named Blaze TV, Glenn Beck threw in some baseless speculation about Islamists and cover-ups. Anti-Muslim hawk Frank Gaffney, the think tank head whose reports have been cited by Donald Trump and who is close to National Security Advisor John Bolton, issued a statement which passingly acknowledged that the cause of the fire was undetermined but still tied it to a “Sharia-supremacist assault on Christianity in France.” On Fox News, Tucker Carlson averred that “we’re not, I want to be clear, speculating about the cause of this fire.” His guest on the show was Mark Steyn, who talked about the Notre Dame fire by saying that “Christendom is in retreat in Europe” and that the French were especially “godless” even for Europeans. Steyn also brought up the horrific murder of a priest by two ISIS-affiliated terrorists in Normandy in 2016 as well as his own visit to the Basilica of Saint Denis, located “in the heart of what is now a Muslim suburb.” That was a fairly typical Notre Dame take from the “fall of Europe” crowd: even if migrants and Muslims didn’t do it, they sort of did it anyway just by being around. Call it passive terrorism by way of osmosis. This sort of loose talk is especially irresponsible because church attacks in France are a real problem, with nearly 900 incidents were recorded last year. But it’s important to understand the real sources: Ellen Fantini, director of the Vienna-based Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, has said that while some perpetrators are Islamists, others are anarchists or radical feminists. Still others are teenage pranksters or vagrants. Attacks on churches happen in America, too. A 2011 analysis of FBI crime statistics found over 7,000 incidents of “property damage/destruction” at churches or synagogues in 2009; a later study estimated that there are approximately 285 cases of arson a year in America that target religious institutions. Pew reports that over the last 20 years, half of the church fires in America have been arson. The principal culprits do not seem to be Islamists. Attacks on churches should be a serious concern. They shouldn’t be fodder for conspiracy theories and Clash of Civilizations play-acting. Podcast · May 27 2021 Bill Kristol on "Boob Bait for the Bubbas" On today’s Bulwark podcast, Bill Kristol joins Charlie Sykes to discuss how the GOP has resorted to placating its base w... The left didn’t go in for Notre Dame Trutherism, but there were some pretty bad takes from that side, too—though in fairness, some of the examples held up by right-of-center critics such as reporter Andy Ngo were so obscure they smacked of outrage mining. The tweets in Ngo’s collection proclaiming that the fire was karma for French colonial crimes mainly came not just from Twitter randos but from teenagers. For a more substantive terrible take, one can always count on Rolling Stone. The magazine’s culture critic E.J Dickson went for a “woke” angle in her article on the Notre Dame rebuilding effort, giving prominent space to scholars who thought that the old cathedral had been too “overburdened” with symbolism—Catholicism, French identity and all that other problematic stuff.