The Chapel Architecture

The Chapel Architecture. . The Brick Chapel was a unique building in the 17th-century Chesapeake. The combination of a Latin Cross plan, massive brick foundation, special window bricks, soaring walls, tiled roof, and imported stone floor is exceptional for this early date. Jesuits used classical concepts to create impressive churches meant to inspire worshipers., As scholar Tom Lucas S.J. has found, 17th-century Jesuits emphasized verticality, luminosity, and beauty in their churches. With walls 24 feet high, many windows, and the altar and art objects inside, the chapel reflected these goals perfectly., The front façade of the chapel was almost certainly emphasized with special treatment. While builders preferred stone, masons sometimes used exterior plaster called rendering to simulate stone. The chapel was the first in Maryland, and one of the first buildings in all of English America, to be designed with classical ideas., [Caption:] , Although there was no single "Jesuit style," from Italy to India, Jesuit builders in the 17th century used similar ideas. The principal elements, flat columns or pilasters, double doors, entablature, niche, pediment, curved gable, and pyramids at the corners, were typical of fashionable European concepts of architecture that came out of the Renaissance and the Catholic Reformation., [Aside:] , Who built the chapel?. , Regrettably, we do not know. Father Henry Warren was head of the Jesuits in Maryland during the 1660s but there is no evidence he had architectural training. Certain features, such as the absence of a construction trench surrounding the foundation, along with other features not typically found in English buildings, may indicate the Jesuits sent an expert from the Continent. Unless some long-misfiled document is found in an archive somewhere, we will never know who designed and built this significant structure., [Caption:] , There was no associated construction trench surrounding the foundation. Instead, builders dug the trench exactly as wide as the planned foundation.