Kirkpatrick Chapel
The Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick Memorial Chapel, known as Kirkpatrick Chapel, is the chapel to Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and located on the university's main campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey in the United States. Kirkpatrick Chapel is among the university's oldest extant buildings, and one of six buildings located on a historic section of the university's College Avenue Campus in New Brunswick known as the Queens Campus. Built in 1872 when Rutgers was a small, private liberal arts college, the chapel was designed by architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh at the beginning of his career. Hardenbergh, a native of New Brunswick, was the great-great-grandson of Rutgers' first president, the Rev. Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh. It was the third of three projects that Hardenbergh designed for the college.
Kirkpatrick Chapel was named in honour of Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick was the wife of Littleton Kirkpatrick, a local attorney and politician who was a member of the board of trustees of Rutgers College from 1841 until his death in 1859. When Sophia Kirkpatrick died in 1871, Rutgers was named as the residuary legatee of her estate. A bequest of $61,054.57 from her estate funded the construction of the chapel. According to Rutgers, this marked the first time in New Jersey history that an institution became a direct heir to an estate.
The chapel was designed in the High Victorian Gothic Revival style that was popular at the middle of the nineteenth century in the United States. Hardenbergh's design incorporated features common to fourteenth-century German and English Gothic churches. According to the New Jersey Historic Trust, the chapel's stained glass windows feature "some of the first opalescent and multicolored sheet glass manufactured in America." Four of the chapel's windows were created by the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Kirkpatrick Chapel is a contributing property of the Queens Campus Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 2, 1973.
For its first 30 years, the chapel was used as a college library and for holding daily chapel services. Although Rutgers was founded as a private college affiliated with the Dutch Reformed faith, today, it is a state university and nonsectarian. The chapel is available to students, alumni, and faculty of all faiths, and a variety of services are held throughout the academic term. It is also used for university events including convocation, concerts, alumni and faculty weddings, funerals, and lectures by prominent intellectuals and world leaders.
History
The Kirkpatrick family and Rutgers
When Sophia Astley Kirkpatrick died on March 6, 1871, at the age of 68, she named Rutgers College as her estate's residuary legatee. At that time, Rutgers was a small, private liberal arts college in New Brunswick, New Jersey, affiliated with the Dutch Reformed faith. Founded in 1766 as Queen's College, Rutgers is the eighth-oldest institution of higher education established in the United States. It was one of nine colleges founded in the American colonies before the Revolutionary War. Rutgers' website states that this bequest from Sophia Kirkpatrick's will was the first time in New Jersey legal history that an institution became a direct heir to an estate.Sophia was the daughter of wealthy merchant and land investor Thomas Astley of Philadelphia. She married Littleton Kirkpatrick on October 18, 1832. Littleton, an attorney and 1815 graduate of Princeton, was a member of a wealthy, prominent New Brunswick family and pursued a career in politics. They did not have any children. During his career, Littleton Kirkpatrick was elected as county surrogate, mayor of New Brunswick, and as a Whig Party member of the United States House of Representatives during the Twenty-Eighth Congress. He served as a trustee of Rutgers College for 18 years from 1841 until his death in 1859. Sophia remained in New Brunswick after her husband's death. A devoted member of the city's First Presbyterian Church, she was later described as having "adorned her profession by her Christian graces and her many deeds of charity and beneficence to the needy and suffering."
Littleton Kirkpatrick was the son of Jane Bayard and Judge Andrew Kirkpatrick who served as Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. He was grandson of Philadelphia merchant and statesman Colonel John Bayard who served as speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly, delegate to the Continental Congress, judge, mayor of New Brunswick, and was a Revolutionary War hero.
The Kirkpatrick family had a long association with Queen's College and subsequently with Rutgers. Several members of the family served as trustees or received degrees from the college, including the following:
- Littleton's father, Andrew Kirkpatrick, a 1775 graduate of Princeton, taught at the Queen's College Grammar School in 1782, received an honorary Masters from Queen's College in 1783, and served as a trustee from 1782 to 1809.
- Littleton's brother, John Bayard Kirkpatrick, Esq., was an 1815 graduate of Rutgers when it was Queen's College.
- Littleton's nephew, Andrew Kirkpatrick, studied at Rutgers from 1860 to 1862 before receiving a bachelor's degree from Union College in 1863.
- Another nephew, John Bayard Kirkpatrick, Jr., received a bachelor's degree in 1866 and later served as college trustee.
- John Bayard Kirkpatrick III received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1900.
Hardenbergh's design and construction
A young architect who had recently completed his apprenticeship and started his own firm, Henry Janeway Hardenbergh, was hired by the trustees in 1870 to design an addition to the Rutgers College Grammar School then housed in Alexander Johnston Hall located across from the Queen's Campus on College Avenue. He charged the college $312 for his work. Born and raised in New Brunswick, Hardenbergh received the contract through family connections. His great-great-grandfather, the Rev. Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh, was Rutgers' first president and one of its founders. Further, several members of his family were graduates, trustees, or otherwise associated with the school through the nineteenth century. His grandfather, Rev. Jacob Janeway served as vice president of the college, and turned down the post of president in 1840. Hardenbergh studied for five years as an apprentice draftsman under German-American architect Detlef Lienau. Lienau was also connected with projects in the city of New Brunswick and later designed the Gardner A. Sage Library on the campus of New Brunswick Theological Seminary after Hardenbergh's earlier design for the seminary's Suydam Hall, built in 1873.
After completing the addition to Alexander Johnston Hall in 1870, Hardenbergh was hired to design a Gothic Revival-style Geological Hall that was erected in 1872 on the south side of Old Queen's; the hall was built with funds Rutgers had received from the federal government in becoming New Jersey's land grant college and from the university's first fundraising campaign. The new chapel, designed by Hardenbergh to complement the Geological Hall, would be built on Old Queens north side. Kirkpatrick Chapel was the third of three projects that Hardenbergh designed for Rutgers College. Hardenbergh was at the beginning of his career, and later would design several hotels and skyscrapers in American cities, including designing New York City's Plaza Hotel and the Dakota Building on Central Park among other Edwardian-period buildings. After his death in 1918, Architectural Record celebrated Hardenbergh as "one of the most august and inspiring figures that American architecture has produced."
Kirkpatrick Chapel was erected on a hilltop on which Alexander Hamilton, then an artillery captain commanding sixty men of the New York Provincial Company of Artillery, was thought to have placed his cannons to cover the retreat of George Washington's forces after the British occupation of New York. After the British victory in taking Fort Washington in November 1776, Washington's forces retreated across New Jersey and into Pennsylvania. Hamilton's battery protected the forces as they crossed the Raritan River and passed through New Brunswick in 1776. British forces commanded by Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis under orders from Lieutenant General William Howe, 5th Viscount Howe pursued Washington as far as New Brunswick. A historic marker erected as a gift of the Class of 1899 is located next to the chapel, though a more accurate marker is located near the Rutgers Academic Building.
Kirkpatrick Chapel was completed at a cost of $52,204.57, and dedicated on December 3, 1873.
The chapel, seating 350 people, occupied the front section of the present building. The rear of the building had lecture rooms, the office of the college president, a meeting room for the trustees on the first floor, and a library on the second floor.
In August 1916, workmen began to convert Kirkpatrick Chapel into one large assembly room to be used exclusively as the college's chapel. William P. Hardenbergh, the brother of the architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, donated $10,000 for this purpose in honour of his ancestor who served as the college's first president. Work proceeded quickly and was completed in two months before the college's planned 150th anniversary celebrations scheduled in October. The inner partitions that separated the chapel from the former library and other rooms were removed. The removal of the partitions expanded the capacity of the chapel from 350 persons to 800. However, current fire codes limit capacity to 650.