fourteen firms and architects were paid $500 each to create designs for the cathedral. The deadline for each plan was January 1889. That May, the board of trustees formed a committee to review the more than 60 designs that had been submitted. Many of the competitors were American, though only four were experienced in cathedral construction. The board members then discussed the designs privately; some architects expressed concerns about the secret consultations, since the trustees generally did not have knowledge of architectural design. The competition was narrowed down to four finalists. Namely, these were "Gerona" by William A. Potter and R. H. Robertson; "Three Arabesque Scrolls within a Circle" by George L. Heins and Christopher Grant LaFarge with William Winthrop Kent; "AMDG" by George M. Huss and J. H. Buck; and "Jerusalem the Golden" by William Halsey Wood. "Gerona" used the Gothic style based on Spanish cathedrals; "AMDG" and "Jerusalem the Golden" were in a regular Gothic style, and "Three Arabesque Scrolls" was mainly Byzantine. Potter and Robertson were the only one of the four finalists who had significant experience at the time, and the trustees had agreed not to release any designs without the consent of all competitors, although some contestants broke the agreement anyway by revealing their designs to the media. The finalists were given more than a year to refine the details of their plans: the original deadline was set for February 1890, but was later extended to November after a failed proposal to host the World's Columbian Exposition in Morningside Park. The submissions were placed in public view in April 1891. By then, the public was losing interest in the competition, and the finalist designs mainly received negative criticism. Plan selected In July 1891, the plan-selection committee chose Heins & LaFarge's plan as the winning proposal. The design had been the trustees' second choice; although the trustees liked Potter and Robertson's plan more, W. A. Potter was the bishop's half-brother and the trustees did not want to be accused of nepotism. To Kent's consternation, he was initially not recognized as a co-collaborator, and would not be acknowledged as such until the following year. The group's blueprints called for chapels and end sections with apses; a crossing containing four round arches as well as a dome topped by a massive tower; and transepts with round edges. The interior was based upon Boston's Trinity Church, and the crossing