Washington University
St. Louis, Missouri 63130
www.wustl.edu/tour/danforth2/graham-chapel.html

The National Park Service has designated the Hilltop Campus of Washington University a National Historic Landmark, an honor recognizing, in part, its national significance as an achievement in Collegiate Gothic architecture. This style is based on the buildings of Oxford and Cambridge, the originals of which range in date from the medieval period to the seventeenth century. The architectural firm Cope & Stewardson of Philadelphia popularized the style in the 1890s at the University of Pennsylvania and Bryn Mawr, but the Washington University campus was their largest and most complete achievement.

A university chapel was indicated in the 1899 competition-winning design for the campus, but by the time Graham Chapel was started in 1907, both John Stewardson and Walter Cope had died, both tragically young. Their office in St. Louis was taken over by James P. Jamieson, a young Scotsman who had originally come to St. Louis to supervise construction of the campus. He is credited with devising a method of laying up the usually intractable red Missouri granite so that it has the mellow texture of softer traditional stones.

The design for the chapel is often said to derive from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, which has become familiar from its televised Christmas services. Graham Chapel, like King’s, is especially striking because it stands free from surrounding buildings, unlike most of the collegiate chapels, which are incorporated into quadrangles. In size and detail, however, Graham more closely resembles the chapel at Eton College. Eton and King’s were both founded in 1440 by Henry VI and were constructed in the English late Gothic style called Perpendicular. Graham Chapel’s interior is much plainer than either of its prototypes, Unitarian rather than Royal. The balcony and the organ case are later additions.

The Chapel is named for Benjamin Brown Graham, who died in 1904. His Graham Paper Company was the chief distributing firm in the western and southern states. The chapel was given by his widow, Christine Blair Graham, the daughter of Missouri’s Union hero in the Civil War, Francis Preston Blair, whose statue marks the entrance to Forest Park at Kingshighway and Lindell. The Grahams lived across from the statue and next door to university Chairman Robert Brookings, who masterminded the move of the campus from 18th & Washington, and they were no doubt willing victims of his legendary persuasiveness. The bosses or ornamental carvings on the facade of the chapel are among the most interesting on campus, and some can be traced to a scrapbook of sketches kept by Jamieson and called The Book of Bosses. The large east window in Renaissance style is by the London firm of Clayton & Bell and represents the dedication of Solomon’s temple, an appropriate theme for an institution of higher learning.

The Chamber Chorus sang here on April 28, 1991, in a program of Frederick Delius, Lennox Berkeley and Max Reger, culminating with Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem - the last performance by the full chorus to make use of instrumental accompaniment. The Chorus returned to Graham Chapel on November 15, 1998, for a program of Roman poetry, set to music by composers from the fifteenth century to the present day. This selection was subsequently recorded for the Chorus's fifth compact disc, Rome's Golden Poets.

Notes by Esley Hamilton and Philip Barnes
Photos by Beth Tuttle