Just wait until it has a tabernacle, relics, candles, and flowers, and I'm sure it will look great. At least as good as the average SSPX mass location, if not better.

They could have built or upgraded 100 (or 200?) locations around the US instead of this, which would have served a much greater swath of the American Trad Catholic population. I would have preferred to see that.

When you spend what they've spent on this project -- you BETTER get SOMETHING out of the deal. I certainly HOPE it's nice! A lot of Trad Catholics (specifically, SSPX-attending Trads) in a lot of places gave up their own much-needed local chapel upgrades to make this St. Mary's monument happen.

I still think building monuments in a time of persecution and crisis is the height of foolishness. We should be multiplying catacombs and humble chapels (including tiny homes or 1-room cabins to host travelling priests short term) instead, to maximize how many souls can be cared for. They should be concerned about stability, efficiency, frugality of ministering to souls -- not glory in the eyes of the world.

And some had their chapels closed and sold off and were left with nothing. 

Are there any examples of churches or cathedrals with this particular setup prior to the council?

Sure.  When the time comes, they can face the people to offer a 1965-style hybrid Mass.  LOL.

There's something that seems off to me about the fact that the altar has a cinder block core.

I agree.  What is the difference between this and a Luther table?  And why is the church not structured like the standard rectangle that churches have always sat in?  Why a cross?  Any examples of this structure pre-1970?

I still think building monuments in a time of persecution and crisis is the height of foolishness.

I prefer the old days of Tridentine Mass at a Chicago hotel where the priests still had the zeal to fight Modernism over any type of spectacular architecture.

But, to this comment, these monuments speak to a major shift in the SSPX neo-Trad mentality.  See, the belief of all Trads used to be that Modernists had taken over the Church and that when God eventually restores the Church to Tradition, all the magnificent architecture all over the world will be returned to Catholic use, and that being in the hotels and "catacombs" as it were is an abnormal situation, an aberration.  Just in the Cleveland diocese alone (not to mention Chicago, New York, and a hundred others in the US), in any given one of these there are dozens of churches that rival or exceed this one in grandeur, some of which cannot be reproduced today for any cost due to the lost skills and artisanship.

Building these monuments speaks to a notion where co-existence with the Modernists in a hybrid Conciliar-Trad arrangement will become a permanent new normal.

  And why is the church not structured like the standard rectangle that churches have always sat in?  Why a cross?  Any examples of this structure pre-1970?

In the city where I live, the three churches built in the mid 1800's are built in the form of a cross  (which inside allows for five altars) facing east.

Looks Modernist as shit.

Very much so. To think of all the beautiful European cathedrals that could have served as a model - if this was not a time of ongoing crisis to throw away so much money that could be better spent. But this is the NEOsspx after all.

Pre-1955 or bust!