We covered the first two chapels built and consecrated in a previous blog, the Chapel of St. Saviour and the Chapel of St. Columba. Private subscriptions built all but one of the seven Chapels of the Tongues. Public subscriptions created the funds for construction of the Chapel of St. Ansgar. The languages of the first immigrant groups to arrive in New York are the reason for the theme of the chapels. Despite diverse languages, these immigrants came together in their worship. They are more human in scale and intimate in their presentation than the main Cathedral. The donors could use their own architect and the subsequent designs. Their construction could proceed separate from the overall construction of the Cathedral. Below are the remaining Chapels of the Tongues.
The Chapel of St. James
Henry Vaughan designed this chapel, dedicated 0n May 2, 1916. The exterior is rectangular in plan. It has a crenelated parapet at the roof and pinnacles on buttresses. It is pure English Gothic architecture of the 14th century. The interior walls are Bedford Indiana Limestone. It is 60 feet ling and 39 feet wide. This chapel seats 250 and has its own Skinner organ. The chapel was the gift of Elizabeth Scrivian Potter, wife of Bishop Henry Codman Potter.
The altar is gray Knoxville Tennessee marble and has elaborate limestone reredos. The tomb of Bishop Potter is in the chapel. It is Siena marble with the figure of the Bishop in Serevezza marble.
Many special people have been married in the chapel dedicated to the Spanish immigrants and the patron saint of Spain.
The Chapel of St. Ambrose
Carrere & Hastings designed the chapel, dedicated to the Italian community of New York City. It is considered Modern Renaissance style. The dedication of the chapel occurred in 1914. Sara Whiting Rives gifted the chapel.
The exterior of the Chapel of St. Ambrose is characterized by the half round windows. The Chapel is 50 feet long by 27 feet wide. The floor is inlaid with grey Siena, red Verona and cream colored cenere marble. Rosata marble lines the side walls. The altar and retable are of white alabaster.
The Chapel of St. Martin of Tours
On the exterior there are fleur de lis in quatrefoils. There are large, narrow pointed arch windows with single lights in the basement. The chapel honors French speaking immigrants. Clementina Furniss gifted the chapel designed by Cram & Ferguson and dedicated in 1918. As a Roman soldier, St. Martin clothed a beggar with half his cloak. This chapel,reserved for private devotion, is not included on any tour for visitors.
The interior style is 13th Century Gothic. The pavement is Tennessee pink marble, bordered by Belgian black marble. Indiana limestone lines the interior walls. In the chapel is the statue of Joan of Arc by Anna Hyatt Huntington. Sitting near the statue is a rough stone from the Rouen cell that imprisoned her. The free standing marble altar stands on red marble pillars.
The Chapel of St. Boniface
The exterior features Gutzon Borglum statues in niches of buttresses. They are Charlemagne, Alcuin, Gutenberg and Luther. The chapel dedicated on February 29, 1916 honors German speaking immigrants. The George Sullivan Bowdoin family gifted the chapel. Henry Vaughn designed This chapel. It is a pure specimen of English Gothic architecture of the 14th Century. Vaughn was the original architect for the Washington National Cathedral.
Indiana limestone walls are the interior. The pavement, sanctuary steps and altar consist of pink Knoxville marble with a heavy black border of Belgian marble. The altar is of grey Tennessee marble. The chapel is 48.5 feet long by 28 feet wide.
The Chapel of St. Ansgar
The exterior is rectangular in plan with parapets of quatrefoil tracery. There are pinnacles on the buttresses. Henry Vaughan designed the chapel again in the style of 14th Century Gothic. It is 66 feet long and 41 feet wide. Public subscriptions gifted the chapel in memory of William Reed Huntington. On April 3, 1918 it was dedicated to the needs of Scandinavian Christians.
The Chapel is double-sized similar to St James Chapel. The altar and the statues of the reredos are grayTennessee marble, given by Mrs. Julia Grinnell Bowdoin. The pavement is pink Tennessee marble and mottled Vermont marble. On the ambulatory side of the entrance are statues of St. Ansgar and St. John the Baptist carved by the John Evans and Company of Boston.
Stones from the Lady Chapel of Worcester Cathedral and stones from Ely Cathedrals are located in St. Ansgar’s Chapel.
Must See
As I finish this blog, I wish I could have found more and better images of these beautiful chapels, inside and out. The combination of cut stone and carved stone along with carved wood and stained glass make these amazing structures. Each is different in design and embellishments.
■
- New York Public Library Digital Collection
- Columbia University, Digital Images Collection
- Morningside Heights: A History of Its Architecture and Development, Andrew Dolkart
- A Guide to the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine in the city of New York, Edward Hagaman Hall
- The Living Cathedral, St. John the Divine, A History and Guide, Howard E. Quirk
- Previous blog about St. Saviours and St. Columba’s Chapels. https://divinestone.org/blog/the-seven-chapels-of-tongues/
2 replies on “The Remaining Chapels of the Tongues”
Perhaps some readers could contribute photos of the various chapels, from their personal collection, here in the comment section.
There’s a typo in the piece about St Boniface’s Chapel. It was dedicated in 1916, not 1926.
The date makes a big difference because in 1916, Germany was at war with three of the other nations represented in the chapels of the tongues – France, Italy and the United Kingdom. While the U.S. was still officially neutral in 1916, many Americans were sympathetic to the Allied cause, particularly Episcopalians, with their many cultural ties to the Church of England. William Thomas Manning, soon to be Bishop of New York, was one of many Episcopal clergy advocating for the U.S. to enter the war on the Allied side. He also supported the suppression of German culture in the U.S.
By the following year, with the U.S. in the war, American orchestras and opera companies would cease to perform music by German and Austrian composers, German language instruction would be banned in public schools around the country and German books burned in town squares around the country.
Even in the chapel, one can see evidence of the anti-German hysteria that swept the nation. There is not one German saint or cultural figure to be seen within the chapel. Every saint in the windows is either Anglo-Saxon or Celtic, including Boniface himself, actually an Englishman named Wilfrid, commissioned in the 8th century as a missionary to the tribes in the part of Europe that would eventually be known as Germany.
The central window depicts Jesus Christ flanked by Boniface and Paul, the prototype of martyr missionaries (Boniface was martyred by impalement mid-sermon). The images beneath the full-length figures of Boniface and Paul implicitly refer to the ongoing hostilities in Europe.
Beneath the image of Boniface, a famous scene from his life — his hewing down of an oak tree sacred to the Germanic god Donner or Thor. When I researched this window in the cathedral archives, I found a communication from the British Kempe stained glass studio to Ralph Adams Cram explaining the choice of subject: “The British have again at the present time the task before them of destroying the heathen god of the Germans.”
Beneath St Paul, we see him on the Areopagus preaching to the Athenians (Acts 17:16-34). One can interpret this image as a disparagement of Germany’s vaunted Kultur, for it draws an implicit parallel between the ancient Athenians and the modern Germans who, for all their cultural achievements are, like the Athenians, idolaters, worshippers of the false gods of militarism and autocracy.
By contrast, the iconography of the French chapel, St Martin of Tours, also created during the war years, can be interpreted as a tribute to the nation and culture of France and an expressions of solidarity with its people.