Cold during the winter and like an oven in the Summer. I've been in it many times. Pretty, but pretty impractical as a center of worship.

And given the glass walls, much like a state building in Chicago, your observation makes much sense.

It had a monster of a pipe organ. When it was all working as it was supposed to, which was not always the case, it rivaled the most powerful organs in the world. I saw in Guy's linked article that they're moving it within the building. Good luck to them on that job. I suspect that it will not be completely functional ever again. A pity, that, I suppose, but the cost of keeping a huge pipe organ in proper repair is enormous. I suspect that as the church got into financial trouble, they stopped doing the maintenance required. It's probably a mess by now, and restoring it would cost millions.

And how was the sound experience in the building?

My wife and I have heard choir and organ recitals at a few large cathedrals. We found them to be amazing experiences.

interning for an organ builder as he installed a major organ in my hometown church. I was just 16, and worked alongside the man as he installed, set up and prepared the organ for its first use. I learned a great deal from that, and have maintained my interest in those instruments ever since.

I did learn to play to some degree, but only well enough to play a couple of Bach Preludes and Fugues through. I was a woodwind player and vocalist, not a keyboard player.

So, I go to places with major or historical organs to listen to them. Once, while in Germany, I listened to an organ that had been played by Bach himself in an old church. The organist let me take the bench, and I played one of those preludes on it. I'm sure the shade of Bach was wincing the entire time. The organist certainly was, but was a good-humored man.

The Crystal Cathedral had very poor acoustics and too many hard, echoing surfaces. It muddied almost any music played on that organ.

We heard choral music in Salisbury at the cathedral there. A great sound.

A choir on a two week tour in the 80s. It was a favorite stop.

He offered me a job, but I finally decided not to go in that direction. I did build a one-rank pipe organ for myself, which I kept for several years and then sold. However, as a lark, I designed a small portable 2-octave organ that was well within the capabilities of a home craftsman. At that time I was designing woodworking and other projects for various magazines.

I convinced Popular Mechanics to buy an article on that little toy pipe organ. The article was published in 1982. Many years later, while searching YouTube for organ videos, I happened upon this video:

Everything seems to be on the internet.