Style’s architectural critic raves over new Seminary library, chapel
Ed Slipek takes a look at the quiet transformation of two seminal buildings on Union Theological Seminary’s Brook Road campus — its library and campus chapel. He walks away quietly impressed with the convergence of faith, history and modern architecture: The architecture of the new library embraces the campus’ distinctive Tudor tone in a distinctive, postmodernist […]
Ed Slipek takes a look at the quiet transformation of two seminal buildings on Union Theological Seminary’s Brook Road campus — its library and campus chapel. He walks away quietly impressed with the convergence of faith, history and modern architecture:
The architecture of the new library embraces the campus’ distinctive Tudor tone in a distinctive, postmodernist way. And with such “archeological” elements such as an exterior wall of Schauffler Hall becoming an interior wall of the lobby, the library quickly became an intriguing architectural landmark. Books and manuscripts were transferred from the former Spence Library at the opposite end of the quadrangle.
Spence, one of the seminary’s original structures, was built in 1896 (Charles R. Read Jr., architect) and expanded in the 1940s and 1970s. This building is distinctive architecturally with its original reading room containing skylights and a balcony supported by cast-iron columns. By contrast, an oak-paneled lobby in the Moderne style and another reading room were added in the 1940s.
Twelve years after the chapel became a library, Spence underwent a mind-boggling interior transformation and was rechristened this fall as the Allen and Jeannette Early Center for Christian Education and Worship. It now has meeting spaces, classrooms, faculty offices and, most dramatically, a handsome new worship space, the Julian Lake and Robert Lake Chapel.
While the entire renovation by Glavé & Holmes is spectacular in concept and execution, the chapel is — and appropriately so — the architectural highlight. And it was created within the most unlikely of spaces, the brick-walled shell of the bland structure that once housed eight levels of library stacks. All the thick concrete floors were removed, vertical steel beams installed to support the walls and the two uppermost stack levels eliminated to create an exuberantly open space — a cube measuring 40 feet to a side.
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