Detail of a Stained Glass Window in the Princeton Unversity Chapel, August 2009

Chapel, The University

Chapel, The University, continues a tradition of public worship that goes back to Princeton's founding in 1746. For the first ten years of the College's existence, daily ser~vices were celebrated in the studies of the first two presidents -- the Reverend Jonathan Dickinson, in Elizabethtown, and the Reverend Aaron Burr, in Newark. After the College moved to Princeton in 1756, a prayer-hall in Nassau Hall (for a time the meeting place of the Continental Congress on state occasions, and now the Faculty Room) was used for services until 1847, when the first chapel was built. This chapel, described in a novel of that period as ``a beautiful smile on a plain face,'' was replaced in 1882 by the larger Marquand Chapel, gift of Henry G. Marquand, and thereafter was known as the ``Old Chapel'' until it was razed in 1896 to make way for Pyne Library. Marquand Chapel was destroyed by fire in the spring of 1920. Services were then conducted in Alexander Hall until 1928. The cornerstone of the University Chapel was laid in 1925, and it was dedicated on Sunday, May 31, 1928.

THE DEANS

Until 1928 the president of the University was directly responsible for supervision of the Chapel programs. That year the office of dean of the chapel was created by the trustees and the Reverend Robert Russell Wicks of Holyoke was appointed as the first incumbent. In the same year, the chair of Dean of the Chapel of the University was endowed by their families in memory of the Rev. Wilton Merle-Smith and Judge Walter Lloyd-Smith, twin brothers in the Princeton Class of 1877. The gift also provided for a deanery to house the dean and his family. Dean Wicks challenged the unexamined premises of many undergraduates and demonstrated the vitality of the Christian faith in the modern world. On his retirement in 1947, Wicks was succeeded by the Right Reverend Donald B. Aldrich, former Bishop Coadjutor of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Michigan and a charter trustee of the University. An experienced pastor, Dean Aldrich counseled students compassionately in the confused times following World War II. Owing to ill health, he resigned in 1955. He was succeeded by the Reverend Ernest Gordon, an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland a former minister of Paisley Abbey -- situated in the same town where the Reverend John Witherspoon served as minister of the Laigh Kirk (low church) before his call to the Princeton presidency in 1768.

REQUIRED CHAPEL ATTENDENCE

The College of New Jersey was firmly rooted in the fertile soil of the Great Awakening. One of its empahses was that an individual was accountable before God for his life, his neighbors, his country, and his backyard. This resulted in a personal discipline of prayers, praise, and thanksgiving. For 136 years after the College began, students were required to attend morning prayers (originally at 5 a.m.) and evening prayers daily, and morning and afternoon services on Sunday. These requirements were a source of student complaint and frequent pranks. Stories that have come down from alumni of that period recall that once the seats of the ``Old Chapel'' were tarred, at another time the benches were literally buried in hay, and at still another a cow was discovered up near the pulpit just before the morning service began.

Irreverennce of students was apparently most noticeable during long prayers. President Ermeritus Maclean continued to take part in the services during James McCosh's presidency. He was accustomed to praying not only for the nation and for the College but also for everyone associated with their respective administrations. On one sudnay he concluded his lenghty litany with additional prayers for the Seniors, the Juniors, and Sophomres, and then, Henry Fairfield Osborn 1877 recalled, ``as the Reverend Doctor reached the Freshman, a roar of laughter proceeded from the seemingly reverently bowed heads of the entire student body. At this unexpected `Amen' Doctor McCosh became very impatient. After the disturbance was duly quelled and the Doxology sung with unus