Princeton University Chapel - History

History

Princeton University built the chapel to replace the Marquand Chapel, which stood between where the present chapel and McCosh Hall stand until it burned to the ground in 1920. The location for the new chapel was chosen for two reasons: symbolically, the new chapel would rise from the ashes of the old one, and practically, it would locate the new chapel centrally as the campus expanded eastward.

Ralph Adams Cram, the university's supervising architect, designed and oversaw construction of the new chapel. Cram sought to build a crown jewel for the Collegiate Gothic motif he had championed on the Princeton campus. The university's president, John Grier Hibben, also had a stake in the project: student hostility toward Princeton's brand of mainline Presbyterianism was on the rise. An ordained minister, Hibben hoped the new chapel's majesty would inspire students to attend services of their own volition. Cram, a convert to High Church Episcopalianism from Unitarianism, also lent support to this aim.

Cram designed the chapel with the assistance of Alexander Hoyle, a member of his firm. Albert M. Friend, a faculty member in Princeton's Department of Art and Archaeology, played a central role in planning the iconography. It was built by Matthews Construction Company, which worked on several projects on Princeton's campus. Among those who contributed to the design of stained glass windows were Charles Connick, Henry Lee Willet (of the studio that would become Willet Hauser), and Philadelphia-based stained glass artist Nicola d'Ascenzo.

The plans for the new chapel were made public in 1921. Hibben called replacing the Marquand Chapel "an immediate necessity"; nonetheless, the project encountered financial problems early on. The insurance money from the Marquand Chapel was insufficient, and fundraising for the chapel competed with an ongoing general capital campaign for the university. Ground was ultimately broken during Princeton's commencement ceremonies in June 1924, and in the following year Cram and Hibben laid the cornerstone. The construction received considerable media attention, as it promised to be the largest university chapel in the United States and the second largest in the world after King's College Chapel, Cambridge. The construction cost about $2.3 million and was completed in 1928. Hibben led the dedication ceremony on May 31 of that year, in an elaborate ceremony covered by TIME.

On March 13, 1960, less than six weeks after the first of the Greensboro sit-ins, Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered a sermon at the chapel. In the sermon he called for universal brotherhood and a life of spiritual richness. A plaque on the interior south wall of the chapel's nave commemorates the occasion.

The chapel underwent a two-year, $10 million restoration between 2000 and 2002. Despite the complexity of the work, the chapel remained open throughout the restoration. The project earned a New Jersey Historic Preservation Award in 2002, and the stone work won the 2004 Tucker Award for Renovation and Restoration from Stone World magazine. At the time, two experts working on the stained glass restoration called it the largest such project that had ever been undertaken in the United States; too large for a single studio, it was divided among studios in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Following the restoration, the chapel was rededicated in an interfaith ceremony in which people belonging to Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism gave prayers. Leading the ceremony, then-Dean of Religious Life Thomas Breidenthal said, "This edifice is unmistakably Christian, this chapel is meant to belong to all of us."