April 15, Chapels

This circular staircase is even more impressive in real life.

Students made the chairs in Danforth Chapel and signed their names on the underside of the chairs.

Danforth Chapel.

This is the inside of the Phelps Stokes Chapel. The outside is pictured in my April 15, Berea College entry. When the original chapel burned down in 1902 a New York woman named Olivia Phelps Stokes offered to pay for a new one with two conditions: It was to be built by students and no one was to know where the money came from until after she died. Students made the bricks, they hewed the stones from a place 12 miles away, they felled the trees for the floors, and did all the woodworking for the paneling and ceiling. The building was just called the Chapel until after Olivia died. The students, not used to erecting buildings, must have done okay because the Phelps Stokes Chapel turned 100 in 2006.