ABSTRACT
The diminutive brick Chapel of St. Savior that sits aloof on the vast lawned IIT campus in Chicago is Mies van der Rohe’s sole ecclesiastical building, and as such commands a unique place in his celebrated modernist œuvre. Although the overall appearance of the spare rectangular chapel completed in 1952 is one of bare, taut, ascetic precision, this chapter reveals through close scrutiny of the archival evidence that the architect embraced the commission for the chapel as a singular opportunity to deeply engage with architectural themes that are not present in his secular buildings. He drew particularly upon his surprisingly extensive knowledge of the Gothic building tradition to design a building both modern and historically mindful, delivering a small chapel that in the architect’s own words is an expression “simply and honestly, of what a sacred building should be.”
