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Power-House & Railman. Besides the 14th Century Gothic cathedral—a close copy of Canterbury—Mount Saint Alban plans call for a chapter house, administration building, synod hall, guest house, residences for canons and minor canons There are now schools for girls and boys, a college of preachers, the Bishop's house and garden. All of the 67½-acre wooded hill is to be enclosed by a wall with gates dedicated to the twelve Apostles. Ultimately it will represent perhaps $40,000,000 worth of pious enterprise—what Bishop Freeman calls a "powerhouse of religious energy." Of the more than $12,000,000 the Cathedral Foundation lists as assets, $7,000,000 has been raised since Bishop Freeman took office the autumn of 1923.
James Edward Freeman, 65, had in his youth no intention of going into the church. He was a New York boy, educated in public schools. He jerked soda in a Seventh Avenue drugstore, then went into the Long Island Railroad. He switched at 18 to the New York Central as an office-boy. Years later he returned to a reunion of old New York Central employes. Three of the executives* he recognized as oldtime office-boys and members with him of a church literary society. Office-Boy Freeman became an accountant for the railroad, dabbled in politics. At the age of 22 he was on the speakers' committee in the Benjamin Harrison-Levi P. Morton campaign. The late Bishop Henry Codman Potter of New York heard him speak one night. Summoning young Freeman to his office he said: "You have the gift of tongues, and you are either going to be a menace to society through that gift or you can become a great power for good. I earnestly suggest that you dedicate your life to the Church."
Few months later, James Freeman did so. Bishop Potter helped him read for Holy Orders, had him tutored, ordained him deacon in 1894, priest in 1895. Rector of a Yonkers church for 16 years, he was called to Minneapolis in 1910. When Rector Freeman was considered for the deanship of St. John the Divine or the presidency of St. Stephen's College, the elder J. P. Morgan told him: "You'll not be happy in a town of 300,000 inhabitants. New York is where you belong. You'll be packing your crockery within six months."
Rector Freeman packed no crockery for eleven years. He declined the Bishop Coadjutorship of West Texas and a Chicago church. In 1921 he went to Washington's Epiphany. Two years later there was a diocesan convention in Washington. The Cathedral's executive secretary, Edwin N. Lewis, says that on that fateful day, on the far-off New York Central Lines many an engineer and fireman leaned from his cab to ask: "How's our Bishop running?" Then they learned that Railman Freeman was a bishop.
Men like Bishop Freeman. He is an occasional golfer (with Dr. Ze Barney Thorne Phillips, chaplain to the Senate), an expert crossword puzzler, a pipe and cigaret smoker. He weighs 190 lb., is still husky but much older looking than when he became Bishop of Washington.