ABSTRACT
Attendance at daily chapel services at Vassar College declined significantly after it became optional in 1926. Galvanized by the cultural debates surrounding religious freedom and the post-World War II building boom, Vassar administrators and trustees turned to architecture in an effort to modernize and increase voluntary student participation in campus spiritual life. This chapter explores the institutional and architectural contexts of the historicist, functionalist, and modernist sacred architectural proposals submitted between 1951 and 1953 to achieve these twin goals. Among them was a futuristic interfaith chapel designed by Philip Johnson, rendered by Helmut Jacoby, and commissioned by Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller. Vassar College ultimately opted to restore its historicist chapel, abandoning the idea of adding a modern sacred building by either Johnson or his competitor, Waldron Faulkner. While his project was never realized, Johnson repeated some of its elements in a preliminary version of his modernist synagogue design for Congregation Kneses Tifereth Israel (1954).
