National Cathedral Secret: An unexpected visitor
Walking around the Cathedral to the northwest tower, visitors may notice something strange and startling. Looking down on them from high above is none other than Darth Vader, villain of the Star Wars movies. Darth Vader is a grotesque, which deflects water away from the building (this is different than a gargoyle, which is an active waterspout).
In the 1980s, a National Geographic World contest asked children to design grotesques for the Cathedral. 13-year-old Christopher Rader submit a Darth Vader design, winning third place for his idea. Hay Hall Carpenter scultped the grotesque, with Patrick Plunkett carving it from stone. In 1986, Darth Vader became a menacing permanent part of the National Cathedral’s tower. As AV Club writer Reid McCarter puts it, Darth Vader is there “…to scare the faithful with a fate far worse than eternal damnation: Getting Force-choked by a bipedal air purifier.”
