The Duke University Chapel 

The Duke University Chapel in Durham, N.C., was built from 1930-1935 at a cost of nearly $2.3 million (more than $30 million today). It is built in the English Gothic style, using bluestone from North Carolina and limestone from Indiana.

It was designed by Julian Abele, an African-American architect who designed many buildings on campus; we were pleasantly surprised by this information, and I took the opportunity to read Mr. Abele’s Wikipedia page to learn more about his life and career.

Inside, the church runs 291 feet long, 63 feet wide, and 73 feet high. The main chapel holds 1,200 worshipers, at least that’s what the Chapel’s information sheet says, but Wikipedia says it can accommodate 1,800. What to believe?

There are 77 Chapel windows, designed by 15 craftsmen, and constructed from more than 1 million pieces of glass imported from England, France, and Belgium. The largest window is 17.5 x 38 feet!

The bell tower is 210 feet high, making it one of the tallest university chapels in the world, modeled after the Canterbury Cathedral in the U.K. The heaviest bell weighs over 11,000 pounds!

The 50-bell carillon plays on weekdays at 5:00 pm, so we went over for a live listen (it’s also live-streamed, of course); we both thought the tune played was a little jarring and it was not as soothing as I thought it would be.  

The Chapel choir has more than 100 members, and there are four organs with 150, 920, 5,000+, and 7,000+ pipes, respectively!

To the right of the main entrance stood statues of Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, and Sidney Lanier (a Southern poet).

In 2017, during the nationwide protests regarding Confederate memorials, Lee’s statue was vandalized and subsequently removed. Duke decided to leave the prominent space empty to “evoke this moment in history.”  Maybe the statue of Thomas Jefferson next to the empty space can also spend some time thinking about “moments in history.”