Boston University Marsh Chapel
- Architect
- Ralph Adams Cram
- Year
- 1950
- City
- Boston, MA
Marsh Chapel serves as Boston University's official place of worship, standing on the Charles River Campus the university began planning as early as 1920, when it purchased fifteen acres of riverfront land and commissioned architect Ralph Adams Cram to draw a master plan. The chapel itself waited three decades, through the Depression and the Second World War, before Cram's Gothic design was finally built and dedicated in 1950. It is named for Daniel L. Marsh, the BU president and Methodist minister under whom the campus took shape.
the building
A campus planned decades early. The 1920 master plan paired the future chapel with the Alexander Graham Bell Tower, a Gothic Revival administration building named for the telephone inventor. Construction of the chapel itself was delayed by the Depression and World War II, so the building dedicated in 1950 was realizing a vision three decades old.
the style
Cram designed Marsh Chapel in the Gothic style he had championed since the original 1920 master plan, even as Modernist and other architectural currents were reshaping American campus building by mid-century.
the architect
Ralph Adams Cram, a historically significant American architect, was commissioned in 1920 to draw Boston University's Charles River Campus master plan and returned three decades later to design Marsh Chapel itself in the Gothic idiom he had originally envisioned for the site.
nearby
- Second Church in Boston
- Peter Fuller Building
- Landmark Center
- Fenway Park
- Temple Ohabei Shalom
- Baker House