Maybe his dark curiosity came from his Southern Gothic background (he hails from North Carolina).

What Daniel discovered in the shadowy corners was a host of strange treasures: a Greek amphitheater, antique furniture and leaded windows, wooden angels, plaster gargoyles, light fixtures from the long-destroyed Penn Station, twisted metal remains from the World Trade Center, and a series of saints standing in single file which some workers call “the line to the men’s room.” There was a giant quartz crystal and a huge, ancient fossil — both moved into the crypt after a fire damaged the cathedral in 2001.

Now the cathedral crypt, which runs the full length of St. John’s itself (two football fields long), is undergoing a slow rehabilitation under the direction of Daniel, who was appointed permanent dean in June.

One of Daniel’s goals is to reclaim some of the objects and place them back upstairs at St. John’s.

“I fell in love with the crypt and am still in love with it,” Daniel said. “Basements and attics are symbols of the unconscious, and that’s why they’re mysterious places — places you can explore and find things you didn’t anticipate and make discoveries and get scared to death. They’re wonderful places if you’re brave enough to take the trip.”

This past spring, construction began in the crypt and continues in fits and starts. The unused Greek amphitheater was torn down, revealing tombs which hold the remains of two bishops and the cathedral’s first dean, William Grosvenor, who served from 1911 to 1916.

The new dean has also been taking stock of the side rooms, each named after the chapels above them in the cathedral proper: St. James, St. Saviour, St. Martin. One room holds spare pipes and parts for the organ upstairs, another an antique wooden alms box decorated with wreaths and images of Neptune, as well as an Italianate chair that is possibly — “I’m just guessing,” said Daniel — from the 16th century.

“I want to reclaim the space and the contents of the space,” he said. “No one person will ever get it all done. It’s the succession of generations that gets the work done.” Each dean typically serves between five and 10 years.

The St. James Room, used as an artist studio, is lit through glass bricks. On one end of the studio is a modern wooden bookshelf, which, when pushed, provides a secret doorway to a bedroom for artists who once worked here.

Greg Wyatt, an artist in residence at the cathedral for the past 28 years, fondly remembers working in the crypt space for 14 months from 1982 to ’83 while creating his Peace Fountain. “No one knew I was living down there,” he said. “We would work in 18-hour shifts.” Carpenters built the bookshelf door to give the sculptor privacy when he needed to sleep. Workers also put in a special ceiling in the studio’s bathroom, decorated with images from the Sistine Chapel.

Not everything in the crypt is mysterious and strange, though. Some employees still work down there — in its more normal spaces. Two gymnasiums for local schoolchildren, an industrial kitchen for the weekly Sunday soup kitchen and administrative offices are all housed in the immense crypt.

“It’s nice except for the lack of windows,” said Mia Michelson-Bartlett, who has worked here for five years. “That’s really the only downside.” Among other things, her department organizes tours of the crypt on Halloween. But Michelson-Bartlett doesn’t tell anyone she works in a crypt. “We just say we work downstairs from the cathedral.”

The crypt is not the only part of the Morningside Heights site under construction, a work in progress since its cornerstone was laid in 1892. Building was interrupted by World War I. The nave was completed days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, but because of World War II, new work did not resume until the 1970s. Over the next three decades, design evolved from Romanesque to Gothic. A great spire and tower are planned, though there’s no real timetable.

“The history of cathedral building is that it takes anywhere from two centuries to nine centuries,” Daniel said, “so we’re about on schedule construction wise.”

Though he has no concrete plans on what to do with the crypt, Daniel knows he wants to build a book store, a gift shop and a cafe in the more modern north transept upstairs, where an electrical fire broke out 17 years ago. “We’re imagining a cathedral for the 21st century,” he said. “We’re asking, What does that look like? Not just physically but as far as our mission goes."

Daniel is planning to restart the cathedral’s stonemason program to retrain veterans. “It’s a way of honoring them and thanking them for their service,” he said. “Though I’ve got to find money for it.”

At the entrance to the cathedral, in the north tower near the blue and white rose window, work is underway to ensure the masonry is secure. On a recent afternoon, a construction worker named Pawel Posluszky was up on a 130-foot lift checking to see if any stones were loose. He has worked at landmarks all over the city, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Public Library. “But when I’m here,” Posluszky said, “I feel like I’m home.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Helene Stapinski © 2018 The New York Times