St. Paul's from the north

Walk south down Church St. from 24th and take in the commanding presence of St. Paul’s towers as you near 29th.  Notice that distortion?  Churches throughout history were built with one tower as originally designed, and the second later, in a completely new style — pardonable, given the several hundred years it took to finish the things.

But here, both towers are identical except for size.  I haven’t asked anyone at the church yet, but my guess is that Frank Shea, the original architect, took the convention of disparate steeples and, while

The towers are identical, except for size.

matching them in every English Gothic detail, enlarged the north one to create the peculiarly Renaissance illusion of perspective distortion.  (Btw, I’d swear this was the facade used in that Whoopi Goldberg film “Sister Act”.)