There probably are other places that have more places of worship per square inch of NYC, but the NY Times has a nice profile of some of these New York sanctuaries. I’d never seen the interior of the famous Abyssinian Baptist Church or the Riverside Church.

The author, Holland Cotter, mentions teaching once at St. John the Divine:

During a teaching stint I brought a class here. Ostensibly we were considering differences between Christian and Hindu religious architecture. But the discussion soon swung around to the question of mixing traditional religion with New Age-Pop, as St. John’s does, and was that a problem. After much looking and talking, a consensus was reached: not a problem. And as to the cathedral’s state of perpetual incompletion, that’s life.

Along with descriptions of existing churches, Cotter remembers the loss of a church:

St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, distinctly unmonumental at four stories tall, stood a few blocks from where I lived just south of the World Trade Center. I loved the church’s Old World savor, with its gilded icons and candelabra. I loved that its long-dispersed congregation returned, a devout little band, every Easter. I loved the sight of its silhouette, tiny, against the steel mass of the south tower. When that tower fell on 9/11, St. Nicholas was ground to dust.